


You're a Welcome Glitch

by Ravensmores



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Android Victor Nikiforov, Can a robot learn to love?, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Far Future, Find out, First Dates, Inventor Katsuki Yuuri, M/M, Pining, Prompt Fic, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Secret Identity, Secrets, lots of pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-05-19 14:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 56,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19358989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravensmores/pseuds/Ravensmores
Summary: Yuuri eventually stops moving with a huff, lifting a hand to rub his eyes behind his glasses. “You know what will happen to you if anyone finds out what you really are.”“How would they? I don’t look like a machine.”“Exactly.” Yuuri quickly reaches out and lifts up the longer strands of hair falling across Victor’s eye, pressing his fingers to the visible break in his skin where he’d fused the new memory unit. “It’s rule number one of robotics. Don’t make your android look too human or-”“-or they’ll be liable for immediate confiscation and destruction.” Victor shakes his head to flick Yuuri’s hand away, quickly flattening his hair back down. “I know that.”Victor hadn’t ever flinched at the thought, even if he did have the capacity to. It was knowledge hardwired into all robots, including himself, practically the first thing he knew when Yuuri first switched him back on.With no memory, no purpose and activated in a society that means destruction if discovered, former engineer Yuuri is Victor's only hope in finding his creator while also keeping his very nature a secret.... If that's what both of them really want.





	1. Day 3 With Yuuri

**Author's Note:**

> Whelp after a lot of blood, sweat and tears... it's finally here. My little robot baby.
> 
> From the moment I first saw [jfmesq's](https://jfmesq.tumblr.com/) idea for a story, I knew I just HAD to bring it to life and I really hope I've done their vision justice. It's been a long road with a lot of rewriting, frustration, rewriting, late nights, finger cramps and... rewriting.
> 
> But it's all been worth it.
> 
> Make sure to check out the accompanying moodboard [HERE](https://jfmesq.tumblr.com/post/185848468133/finally-after-weeks-of-a-a-wonderful-partnership) before you start reading.

**Log date: Day 3 WY**

 

If there’s one word Victor would use to describe Yuuri, it’s fascinating.

True, Yuuri is the only real contact he’s had with humans since his activation those days ago, but even from a cursory glance Victor could tell that he wasn't like how humanity had been presented to him through notes and articles. While he was perfectly aware that all humans were different when it came to their hopes, endeavours and looks, within a few minutes of conversation with the man, Victor was certain that he was far from an average example, even an average example of someone with his kind of talent.  

While Yuuri may have a fairly detailed Wikipedia entry that’s technically factually correct, it was nothing like being with him in person. One of the most brilliant minds of his generation, a savant when it came to engineering, someone who was once helping breathe life into the most advanced pieces of robotics in the world… and now he spends his days either lying upside down on his sofa while eating chips or spending two thirds of all his time helping out at his parents inn for barely more than minimum wage.

Yes. Fascinating was the word he’d choose to use.

Fascinating and stubborn. Especially when it came to anything to do with Victor himself.

“No.”

“Oh come on.”

“I said no Victor.”

“Give me one good reason why it isn’t a good idea.”

Yuuri doesn’t lift his head from his tablet, Vicchan’s fuzzy mechanical head resting lazily in his lap. “Victor I can probably list twenty very valid reasons why waltzing up to my place of work with an illegal memory-wiped android that I fished out of a dumpster a few days ago is probably a bad idea.” He doesn’t change his expression as he carefully enunciates each word, casually moving his finger down the screen.

Victor crosses his arms, choosing to ignore the condescension. “No one is going to know about all that.”

Yuuri lets out a visible sigh. Victor can almost feel the frustration. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just-” he waves his hand aimlessly, as if plucking one of the hundred reasons Victor has heard over the past few days out of the air. “People are going to ask questions.”

“So we’ll come up with answers for them.”

“Victor-” he switches off the tablet and walks over to grab his work bag, speaking slowly as he finally lifts his head. “I know you can play out all the possibilities in your mind. You know this will end badly.”

Victors quickly steps into his path, pushing down the annoyance he can feel sparking in his system. This isn’t the first time he’s felt like he was being treated as a child. 

A bratty child.

Yes, they’d had this exact conversation more than once over the past couple of days, but he’d agreed to be Yuuri’s companion which, at least according to the definition programmed into the very fabric of his being, meant actual companionship. Not spending eighteen hours a day sitting around in his tiny apartment and cleaning the same rooms over and over again until he came back and immediately fell into bed. 

“Well what do you expect me to do?” He keeps his tone level, but keeps shifting on his feet every time he sees Yuuri try to duck around him. “You said it yourself, I’m possibly the most advanced piece of technology on the planet right now, plus I already cleaned your whole place while you were asleep.” 

Yuuri eventually stops moving with a huff, lifting a hand to rub his eyes behind his glasses. “You know what will happen to you if anyone finds out what you really are.” 

“How would they? I don’t look like a machine.”

“Exactly.” Yuuri quickly reaches out and lifts up the longer strands of hair falling across Victor’s eye, pressing his fingers to the visible break in his skin where he’d fused the new memory unit. “It’s rule number one of robotics. Don’t make your android look too human or-”

“-or they’ll be liable for immediate confiscation and destruction.” Victor shakes his head to flick Yuuri’s hand away, quickly flattening his hair back down. “I know that.” Victor hadn’t ever flinched at the thought, even if he did have the capacity to. It was knowledge hardwired into all robots, including himself, practically the first thing he knew when Yuuri first switched him back on.

“I don’t want something bad to happen to you,” Yuuri says calmly, something that resonated with genuine concern lacing his tone. “And I don’t want to go to jail.”

Victor keeps quiet for a minute. He can’t argue with that fact. He knows it would only take one slip up from either of them for him to be ripped apart and any future of Yuuri returning to robotics destroyed. As a machine he had no fear of death in the slightest, but Yuuri was a different story. 

He finally stands aside to let Yuuri pass.

It wasn’t just that Victor is bound to protect him from all harm, he’d do that for any human if it was asked of him, it’s that Yuuri is the only real companion he has. He was the one who repaired him, let him stay with him despite the fact he was a walking prison sentence for him, who promised to help Victor find out exactly who he was and where he came from. It would be illogical not to want to do all he could to help him with everything in his life right now.

“I know you’re just trying to help,” Yuuri murmurs as he grabs his keys from the side.

Victor chuckles slightly as he takes the tablet from the sofa and plugs it in to charge. “Yuuri, I’m starting to feel more like a burden than any kind of help right now.”

“You’re not a burden.”

“Really? Because I feel about as useful as a talking paperweight.” The slight irritation in his voice isn’t hidden. The whole point of his existence is to be helpful. The conflict between doing what Yuuri wanted but also wanting to do something _with him_ is enough that he can feel it threatening to short circuit parts of his programming at times.  

“I do get it.” Yuuri is suddenly at his side, words soft. “I mean, you don’t even have any memories outside of this apartment.” 

Victor turns to regard him properly, the urge to try one last time powerful in his mind. “You’ve already hacked into both the Police’s and G-Corp’s main servers. You know no one is looking for me.”

“Officially. We still don’t know who got to you the first time.” Victor registers the slight crinkle around Yuuri’s eyes, possibly from the memory of when he found him. Victor can’t blame him. He’s seen photos of how beaten up he was when Yuuri dragged his non-functioning body back to his place.

“Please.” Victor’s voice is quiet as he gently puts his hands on Yuuri’s shoulders, squeezing lightly. “You know I know how to clean, I can do simple robot repairs, plus I don’t need breaks.” He sees Yuuri open his mouth to protest, so quickly pulls out the last line of reasoning that he has. “You did mention that your family’s inn did need some more help and I don’t need to be paid”

He watches the words hit Yuuri, sees the way his mind flickers as his eyes bore into Victor’s for another few seconds. Eventually he sighs and steps back slightly, shaking his head. “Okay. Fine.” He pulls his bag onto his back, muttering something completely inaudible even to Victor’s hearing before he lifts his head again, eyes harder. “But for the love of God try to be inconspicuous.” 

Victor smiles widely as he reaches out to clip the middle strap of Yuuri’s backpack across his chest, voice the brightest it’s ever been. “When am I not?”

***

As they make their way over to the onsen, Yuuri runs over their plan. 

“Okay, so for now we’ll say that you’re my- friend I guess?” 

“Right.”

“And you needed a place to stay for a bit, so you said you’d volunteer at the onsen to help out.”

“Perfect.”

They keep their voices low, thankful that the bus was mostly empty at this time of the day. Victor can still hear the nerves in Yuuri’s tone and almost feels a little bad for worming his way out of the apartment.

Almost.

Frankly the minute Yuuri had caved, an excitement stronger than anything he’s ever felt had started pulsing through his systems, the thought of actually seeing something that wasn’t the inside of Yuuri’s home or an image he’d downloaded from the internet too much of a joy to ignore.

“Okay under no circumstances are you to go into any detail about your past.” Yuuri lowers his voice further, quickly flicking his eyes around the space to see if anyone was listening. Victor holds in his laugh at the action. “If anyone asks about the accent just say that you’re taking a cross-country trip or something.”

Victor nods and leans back. “According to my analysis, my voice most closely resonates with a St. Petersburg dialect. I can say I’m from there.”

“How much do you know about St. Petersburg?”

“Now?” Victor closes his eyes for a second, quickly searching the city name and downloading every tourist guide, hotel review and piece of published literature on it into his memory. “Everything the internet has to offer.”

He smiles as Yuuri chuckles at his comment. “Just make sure not to bring it up unless anyone asks.”

Victor nods again. “I’m already fluent in Russian anyway.”

“Of course you are.”

They sit in silence for a few more stops. Yuuri sinks a little further into his seat but Victor can feel the tension is his frame worsen with each passing kilometre. It didn’t take an android to notice the way he’s methodically flexing his fingers, or adjusting his glasses every twenty seconds, bottom lip caught between his teeth. It makes Victor more a little uncomfortable to see.

After another couple of minutes, he tentatively reaches out his hand and places it on Yuuri’s knee. He knows how to comfort, how to read human emotion form the smallest indicators, it’s one of the base lines of his programme and right now Yuuri looked like he could use all the reassurance in the world. “It’s going to be fine,” he whispers to the side of Yuuri’s head, moving his fingers to gently unhook Yuuri’s from where they’re digging angry red crescents into his palm. “I’m sure of it.”

Yuuri exhales a little, slowly turning his hand so he could wrap his fingers around Victor’s. He turns towards him, eyes still a little tight behind the shine of his glasses. “I know. But you can’t really blame me for worrying though can you?”

Victor keeps his smile gentle. “No.”

Yuuri keeps his hand in Victor’s for a little longer, eyes still narrowed behind his glasses as he looks back out the window. There’s the tiniest wrinkle knit between his eyebrows, both furrowed a little as various lights from outside speckle across his features. It hadn’t taken long for Victor to figure out that that was his serious thinking face. After a few more seconds, he turns to Victor again. “I know you can only calculate probabilities on the information you already have but-” he takes another breath, briefly closing his eyes. “What are the odds that this all goes terribly wrong?”

Victor cocks his head. “Depends on your definition of ‘terribly wrong.’”

“Okay. Someone realises what you are.”

“Well, I’ve yet to actually be around other humans so I’ve got nothing to go off of there, but if we’re just going by how closely I resemble an actual human-” he lets his eyes lose focus, quickly running the numbers. “-then the odds of someone finding out are very small.”

“How small?”

“7.5 percent likelihood.”

Yuuri is quiet again. He slowly pulls his hand out of Victor’s to grab his phone from his backpack. Opening it, he scrolls through before handing it to Victor, a picture of a traditional Japanese hot spring on screen. 

“Okay, I guess I should give you some information about my family,” he continues, voice a little calmer than before. “That’s the onsen I help run.” He gestures to the screen. “It’s been in my family for generations, and now belongs to-”

“Your Mother Hiroko and Father Toshiya but your sister also works there full time,” Victor finishes, putting the phone down so he can bring up the most detailed news article he can find in front of his own optical units. “It’s been in the care of your family for over 400 years now without having to close down for any sizable length of time, despite how ‘increasingly hard it is to keep an establishment like that afloat these days.’” 

He hears Yuuri let out a staccatoed laugh next to him. “I think I know exactly which article you’re reading there.” He feels the phone being pulled from his grasp as he continues to look through the article. “Though maybe face the window while you’re reading. as normal people don’t just stare off into space for minutes at a time.”

“Right. Sorry.” Victor forces himself to blink a couple of times and jerks his head towards the window. He skims through the rest of the articles he can find about the onsen’s history, how it compares to similar establishments, average customer profiles and any other information he can scour from the available sources. After a few more seconds, he stops, settling on a news website from years past. “Okay, I think I have everything I need,” he murmurs as he slowly scans down the page. “You’ve had a surprising amount of news coverage. Though this one is really highlighting how proud the current owners are of the fact-” He feels his lips stop when the image attached to the article scrolls into view. Sitting on a small bed and clutching some sort of large silver trophy is Yuuri. Specially a Yuuri from probably about 20 years ago. His grin splits from ear to ear, the same pair of blue frames perched on the tip of his nose, his face a lot fuller than now and painted with a dainty pink blush as his small hands protectively grip onto the award.

Victor’s reaction is immediate.

“Oh my goodness Yuuri you were so cute!” The glee in his voice isn’t hidden. He’s glad Yuuri can’t see what he’s doing as he crops the picture and saves it to his memory. 

He had so far resisted looking up ‘Katsuki Yuuri’ on any kind of image search but now he is more tempted than ever.

“What?”

He grabs Yuuri’s phone back and brings up the image. Blinking his vision back, he notices the same gentle pink from the picture has bloomed across Yuuri’s cheeks as he stares down at the picture. His lips curl at little as he locks the screen and shoves it back in his pocket. “If by cute you mean fat, then sure.”

Victor catches the slightly sour note to Yuuri’s words. 

“Oh come on, even you have to admit you were adorable.” He keeps his voice light as he thinks about young Yuuri’s unfeasibly joyful face in the photo. “So happy and squishy.”

Yuuri seems to visibly wince a little at the comment. He quickly looks down, fiddling with the case on his phone, voice small. “If you say so.” 

There’s another beat of silence between them. Yuuri doesn’t look up, keeping his eyes trained to his hands as the seconds seem to tick past more slowly. He doesn’t need to pick up on the microscopic movements around his fingers and eyes to realise that he’s made it awkward.

 _Fix this Victor_.

The command is flashing through his mind almost instantly. Keeping Yuuri happy is his primary function at the moment, so it’s unsurprising how loudly that thought is pulsing through his programming, but it’s different to the other times his programming has kicked in.

He feels bad. 

He clears his throat as he leans forward slightly to try and catch Yuuri’s eye. “Well I have the ability to be completely objective. And objectively speaking, that is the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.”

Yuuri finally looks up, Victor relieved at the small smile playing on his lips. “You’re lucky you know. You never had any kind of awkward teenage phase or weird growth spurt.”

Victor smiles back. “No. But could you imagine it?”

“Honestly? No.” Yuuri slowly casts his eyes up and down Victor’s face, breath warm against Victor’s skin as he leans forward. It’s a surprisingly nice sensation. “Whoever designed you really knew their aesthetics.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere Yuuri.” Victor appreciates the compliment but is also perfectly aware of how he looks. Objectively he can see the symmetry on his features, the amount of care someone clearly put into crafting him and making him pleasing to the human eye. He’d spent more than a few hours scanning every inch of his body in Yuuri’s mirror, trying to find some clue in his design about where he came from. It hadn’t helped. After taking in the sprinkling to silvery freckles across his nose and the oddly specific placing of moles across his torso and legs, he had come to another conclusion though. 

Victor keeps his smile steady as he speaks. “Or maybe they modelled me on someone else.”

Yuuri nods slowly, the small wrinkle between his brows returning. “I had thought of that as well.”

Victor had tried not to let that particular theory get to him. If creating an android that looked like a human was bad, building one that was the spitting image of an existing human could only be that much worse. Plus, the notion that there could be someone who looks just like him already wandering around, completely unaware that their likeness had been used for an illegal machine was not a nice idea to contemplate.

_Or what if they did know? What if they’re the one who tried to smash him to pieces?_

If Victor had the ability to pale, he probably would have at that thought.

Yuuri seems to sense his discomfort, his smile falling a little. Leaning back over, he opens the phone again, voice warm. “You know, I thought I’d deleted every copy of this image online. I’m surprised I missed this one.” He enlarges the picture, mock-grimacing as his young face fills the screen. “I must be losing my touch.”

Victor can’t help but laugh at that thought. It breaks through the worry a little. “I don’t think so. Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“True.”

The air between them returns to being pleasant, Victor idling away the rest of the bus ride flicking through pictures of the onsen and working out the perfect opening line for Yuuri’s family. For some reason he can’t settle on the correct greeting, something distracting him a little.

Even with his objectivity and rationale about how the whole encounter will go, he can’t help the small twinge of nerves sparking in his head. He knows it’s silly, that worrying neither helps any situation nor any of the people involved, but with so much on the line for the two of them, he’s starting to see Yuuri’s line of reasoning a little more.

“Victor? We’re the next stop.” 

Yuuri’s words cut through his processor, pulling him back to the present. Looking over to the soft, happy expression on his face, Victor can already feel his confidence returning. He reaches out to grab Yuuri’s bag as he stands, holding out his hand as the bus smoothly glides to a stop. “I’m ready when you are.”

As they exit the bus, he can’t help but whip his head around a few times to take in all the scenery. Outside of Yuuri’s apartment hadn’t exactly been the best place for sightseeing. Nothing but a grey crowded street surrounded by grey buildings, grey litter and grey people. True, it was nice to actually see things that weren’t the four walls of Yuuri’s home, but they had nothing on the therapy district. 

It really was surprising how much better the streets got the closer they went towards Central.

As they walk, they’re soon surrounded by the bright swirls of neon lights attached to the buildings around them. There isn’t a piece of trash to be found on the smooth black cobbles, each establishment standing tall and colourful against the skyline. Even though they aren’t close enough to the centre of the city to see actual sun, the sky wasn’t the same ashen smog that made up the thick atmosphere of downtown. The clouds here were softer, a hint of gold colouring the blanket of grey, like a torch shining through a thin stretch of cotton wool.

Everywhere he looks there are signs projecting a sea of softly spinning holograms to advertise all the various treatments available.

_Bee’s venom facial for a youthful glow!_

_Smooth your skin with pure bred feeder fish!_

_Try a Zen-Su style massage to relieve stubborn knots!_

Victor hasn’t even heard of half of these treatments but makes a note to research them when he has time. 

He needs to see how the onsen can compete with them.

Yuuri grabs onto Victor’s shoulder as he twirls again, steadying him and positioning him forward. “Keep acting like that and people really are going to think you’re a tourist.” Yuuri’s eyes flick to the small group of women eyeing them with poorly hidden amusement.

Victor rolls his eyes as he starts walking straight. “Well, they aren’t exactly wrong. I haven’t been here before.”

“As far as you remember.” Yuuri murmurs, steering them down another road.

Victor chooses to ignore the comment.

As they approach the end of the street, the buildings become more spaced out, the prices of advertised treatments dropping. Yuuri plucks off his glasses and rubs them on the bottom of his shirt. “Do you think you’ll need any more information about the onsen?”  

“I think I’m good. There was a lot online.”

“Good.” Yuuri turns to smile at him as he puts his glasses back on. “You being able to do that on the spot is probably going to save us a lot of trouble in the long run.”

Victor briefly wonders why he has the sudden urge to poke the reddened dent left on the bridge of his nose, before quickly replaying all the notes he’s collected in front of his optical display. “Would you like to hear a selection of your recent Yelp reviews?”

It’s Yuuri’s turn to roll his eyes, gently shoving Victor’s shoulder as he chuckles. “No.”

It’s a short walk to the onsen after that.

Even at the end of the street it stands out vastly from the other building’s surrounding it. As they approach, Victor can’t help but notice how out of place it was in such an advanced area of the city. The owners had apparently made the decision to run with it’s more rustic look, the simple stone pathway surrounding it and old wooden frame making it look like an odd piece of history when surrounded by the sleek metallic curves of its neighbours. If it weren’t for the clearly artificial sakura trees blooming brightly by the entrance it would have looked more at home greyed and faded in some nineteenth century photograph or replicated in a slightly out of touch museum.

“I know it’s not much compared to the other places around here.” Yuuri gestures to the various other buildings around them as he speaks, a note of slight sadness to his voice, “But it’s one of the reasons we still get customers. Recently we’ve been marketing it as more of a retro experience.”

“How is business then?” Victor feels bad for asking when Yuuri ducks his head away slightly.

“It could be better.” He quickly looks back up, his smile just a little too pinched to be real. “But we’ve been seeing more people around lately due to the cold weather, hopefully word will spread.”

Victor doesn’t question him. He knows it won’t make him feel any better.

During his deep look into the information around the onsen, he had picked up on how it was one of the last of it’s kind around the city, most others closing in recent decades due to lack of profitability or shifts in the atmosphere and earth quality around them ultimately ruining the experience. Frankly he was surprised this one has stayed running this long. 

He knows there has to be some way to market it better. There’s something oddly beautiful about the soft warmth of the wooden exterior and it’s fun, traditional aesthetic. Even with the sun illuminating the street through the clouds, he can clearly see soft breaths of steam from the back of the complex dancing up towards the sky. Bamboo sprouts out from either edge of the path leading to the gate, like some kind of ancient path leading you to another world. Tucked away in it’s own little corner surrounded by so much of the same cookie cutter building designs, the inn is a refreshing change of pace.

He wishes that he wasn’t perfectly aware that no one these days remotely cares about that.

 A quick look into recent trends had revealed that most people’s priorities lay in staying on the cutting edge of technology, unless something was _fashionably_ retro, and that was already getting harder for businesses with technology moves so fast these days. Even in the few days he’d been operation, he knew exactly why the streets around Yuuri’s place were littered with various android parts, some barely months old and yet still lying in puddles to rust.

He was starting to piece together why Yuuri collected and meticulously cleaned so many.

Turning to Yuuri, he can see the worry returned in full force, waves of discomfort radiating off of him in an almost visible aura. 

He reaches out to lightly brush his arm, keeping his smile delicate as they make their way up towards the entrance. He doesn’t need to lie here, and Yuuri looked like he could use some kind words right about now.

 “I love it.”

***

“The corridor they step into is bathed in shadows. It takes Victor a second to adjust his eyes as the warm light from the outside world disappears behind the click of a side door. He doesn’t have a chance to reassure Yuuri any further as they’re almost immediately greeted with two large boxes shoved in Yuuri’s face, the force causing his gasses to jump from his face.

“Thank God you’re here.” The voice from behind the cardboard sounds exhausted, the face that pokes around the side a few seconds later matching. “We have so much to unload today thanks to a whole party of-” The woman’s face stops mid-sentence when she notices Victor standing there. She takes a full second to slowly look him up and down before shifting her gaze over to Yuuri. “Yuuri, this is the staff entrance you know.” She isn’t wearing a smile as she speaks. Victor instantly recognises the crop of blonde highlights from the various photos he’d come across online, those tired brown eyes just as soft as the ones he’s been looking at for three days now.

“Mari right?” Victor keeps his voice is bright as he extends his hand.

It’s all about making a good impression. It’s what he was designed to do.

“Yes?” She cocks her head, clearly surprised that Victor is talking to her with such familiarity. She doesn’t take his hand. “Have we met?”

“No.” Yuuri cuts in, voice audibly strained and he drops the boxes on the ground in front of them. “Look, where are our parents?”

“Dining area. Why?” She’s eyeing Victor with suspicion. He doesn’t need to analyse any subtle shifts in her body language to tell that she’s wary of a complete stranger being here.

Yuuri quickly steps in front of him, voice a little harder. “Just grab them for me please. It’s important”

Mari opens her mouth to argue but clicks it shut when Yuuri quickly mouths something to her that Victor doesn’t quite catch. She rolls her eyes and turns. “Okay.”

Yuuri slumps against a wall when she turns the corner, quickly running a hand down his face. After a second he turns to Victor, smile tight. “Victor, remember what we talked about.”

It’s Victor’s turn to roll his eyes. “Yuuri. Please just relax.” He knows Yuuri’s mind doesn’t work the same way his does, that he can’t run any simulations and see that this is almost guaranteed to work. As a human he was prone to worry about the smallest things and, just from their brief time together, Victor can already tell that Yuuri definitely spends more time being anxious than the average person. He only has Victor’s word to go on, so for now, he’s going to divert all operations into being as reassuring as he can. 

He turns to Yuuri properly and lightly places his hands on his shoulders. “Please just have some faith in me.” 

Yuuri’s tired expression breaks a little at the words. “I already do.”

Victor feels something strange spark in his mind at those words. Something different registering in programme at the sincerity of his hushed tone. He considers running a quick diagnostic to figure out what that might have been when he hears the gentle hum of three separate voices coming towards them, one of them clearly Mari’s. 

The check-up will have to wait.

He gives Yuuri’s shoulders one last squeeze as he turns to look back down the corridor, back straight, shoulders back, smile practiced and perfect.

He’s mildly surprised when he feels the gentle pressure of Yuuri’s hand against his arm. “7.5 percent chance of failure you said.”

Victor nods slowly. “Numbers don’t lie.” He turns his head forward to smile as the three figures approach them. “And I you know I can’t be dishonest with you.” 

Even if Victor hadn’t researched online, even the briefest glance would have revealed that the people currently standing with Mari were Yuuri’s parents. Even with both of them clearly being more than thirty years his senior, the soft roundness of his Mother’s face and the deep amber reflecting in his Father’s eyes behind his own glasses were both aspects of Yuuri’s aesthetic he’d become very familiar with already.

It’s nice to see.

“Hi Yuuri,” His mother’s voice is the kindest he’s heard in his short memory, her eyes crinkling with a soft happiness as she speaks. Victor wishes he couldn’t see how prominent the shadows under them are.

“Hi.” Yuuri’s smile matches hers, “I’m glad you’re here, I need to talk to you about something.”

“And who’s this?” Her voice is bright as she turns to Victor, no hint of worry or suspicion in her tone.

Yuuri takes a quick breath. “Everyone, this is Victor.”

He lifts a hand to wave, warm grin perfectly in place. “A pleasure.”

“Victor’s going to be staying with me for a while, so we thought it would be a good idea if he helped out here for a bit. If that’s okay.” The last few words are a little rushed. Victor hopes no one besides him notices.

Mari’s eyes drift from Yuuri to Victor, before settling back on her brother. Her smile dissolves into a slightly sharper smirk. “Well this is a first, Yuuri actually bringing someone home with him.”

“ _Mari_ ,” Yuuri hisses, eyes narrowing towards her.

“What?” She hides her growing grin behind the back of her hand, an eyebrow raised at Yuuri. “We never thought you were going to meet anyone outside of that tiny little apartment of yours.” She gestures towards Victor with her other hand, looking him up and down again with wider eyes. “This is honestly a surprise.”

Victor watches Yuuri’s mother’s face light up, her hands clapping together in front of her mouth. “So, are you dating?”

“W-What?” Yuuri’s eyes widen at the statement, voice stuttering in surprise. “Of course we-”

“Yes.” The word is past Victor’s lips almost by instinct. A hundred plans had flicked through his mind in the past few seconds, this one with the highest success rate. 

Though oddly he’d spoken it before his calculations had concluded.

Yuuri whips round, eyebrows raising at his cool expression. “Uh, Victor?”

“I’m sorry it took so long for us to finally meet.” Victor continues smoothly, not missing a beat as he extends his hand. “I think he was just a bit embarrassed to tell you all. Sorry if I don’t live up to expectations.”

“Nonsense!” His mother is grabbing his hand with enthusiasm, voice dripping with something Victor can only call pure sunshine. “It’s so great that you’re here. I mean, of course we don’t expect you to work-”

“I insist.” Victor interrupts, holding up his other hand. “This place is amazing, I want to help.”

“Well that’s wonderful. I’m sure Yuuri could use the help.” His father finally speaks, voice just as jovial. “Are you into robotics too?”

Victor smirks. “Very much so.”

“Right well I should show Victor around.” Yuuri grabs onto Victor’s wrist harder than before and starts pulling him down the corridor. “Come on.”

Victor doesn’t stop his laugh. “Okay then dear.”

He drags Victor in silence for a few more seconds before pushing him into a small empty room and quickly sliding the door closed. “Victor, answer me one question please.” His voice is quiet, his face still turned towards the door. Victor can see the tension in his frame.

“Certainly.”

“What was that?” He quickly spins around, expression tight.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what.”

“Do I?” Victor keeps his smile innocent, unable to resist teasing him a little. He’s recently discovered it’s one of his favourite past times.

Yuuri audibly sighs. “Why did you tell them we’re a couple? You’re supposed to be lying low, not announcing yourself to the whole place.” He runs a hand down his face, slumping against the wall behind him. “That wasn’t the plan.”

Victor wants to laugh, but he does understand his worry. He slowly approaches and crouches down next to him on the floor. He reaches over to softly lift his chin from where it’s firmly tucked against his chest. “I’ve run the scenarios well over a hundred times since we started speaking.” He keeps his voice as gentle as the onsen’s steam, waiting for Yuuri to raise his face properly before he continues. “Pretending to be a couple has the lowest probability of anyone becoming suspicious.”

“Really?”

“Well as far as plausible scenarios go, I can either be your partner or some random person that you just met and decided to take home with you.” He finishes the statement with a slight smirk, before holding out his hand to pull him up.

Yuuri is silent for a minute, that small wrinkle back between his brows. Eventually he sighs again and takes off his glasses to rub them on the bottom of his shirt. Victor idly wonders if that’s a nervous tick of sorts. “Fair enough,” he murmurs quietly as he grabs onto Victor’s hand and stands. “But why couldn’t you have just said we were friends. You know, _like we were going to?_ ”

“This makes more sense. Since I’m meeting your family, wanting to work with you and living with you, a romantic entanglement is the most likely explanation.” The more he talks, the more confident he becomes in his decision. He isn’t lying when he says this option has the highest success rate, but for some reason he doesn’t feel like telling Yuuri that it’s only by 0.8 percent. “I ran the scenarios.”

“Okay. Fine.” Yuuri sounds a little exhausted by the whole exchange but doesn’t press the matter any further. “For the time that you’re here you can be my- boyfriend.”

Victor smiles a little at the word. He knows it’s just a facade, a small lie to keep them both safe and stop anyone asking too many probing questions, but something about the notion of being such an intimate part of Yuuri’s life has that strange feeling buzzing softly in his programming again. Like happiness but somehow… a little warmer.

Victor decides to ignore it and starts heading towards the door.

“This is going to be great.” He doesn’t hide the slight tease to his tone as he takes Yuuri’s hand and pulls him out of the room and in a random direction, an excitement stronger than anything he’d felt earlier starting to churn through his system.  “Okay come on, show me what I have to do then!”

***

The morning passes in a blur. Victor remembers each scenario with perfect clarity, yet seeing how the onsen works, seeing Yuuri’s day to day work somehow makes the time seem to pass a little quicker.

Inside was actually a lot more advanced than he’s originally pictured. They’d opted to keep a more traditional interior for a Japanese inn, but embellished each room with more up-to-date features. The banquet hall was still quaint, all wood and tatami with soft blankets draped around the tables, but through to the left was a much more advanced restaurant area. Yuuri had explained that it was for guests but also for people who just wanted to stop in for food or a few drinks.

“It used to be updated every few years, back when we were more popular.” Yuuri comments when Victor sticks his head in to have a look. “And when I had the money to help out.”

He can see where that money went. 

It’s a large space. At least triple the size of the standard banquet rooms and spanning over two different levels. The lights are velvety red and dimmed aside for a few purposely placed spotlights shining white and powerful down to the tables and the bar in the corner. Seats were close together, one large central table looped around another formidable cherry tree standing proudly in the centre casting a soft shifting pink light onto the surrounding wood. From the lighting setup, to the glowing holograms on the walls listing the specials, to the steel curves of the chairs, It’s all the latest styles and technology… from about six years ago. Further examination reveals that the last piece of new equipment that was installed was done so approximately two months after Yuuri had left his position at G-Corp.

Even so, it didn’t detract from how impressive the space really is.

Clearly it was designed for more of a show while people ate. Near the front was a sushi bar, one similar to many he’d come across while doing his research. Even on the onsen’s own website there was more than one image of someone preparing food behind the glass, guests from all kinds of backgrounds sitting and watching with a quiet awe. It’s a bittersweet picture. In those images the place was packed and, judging by the phone someone was using in the background, it was taken well over a decade ago.

Victor finds it a real shame. Currently the main area is deserted, the bar basically empty save for a few people having a quiet conversation over their drinks in the corner.

He’s sure that there _should_ be more people. It’s certainly not worse off than half of the hotels around here. He had spent a few minutes running through their various websites to compare.

“It’s just the onsen as a whole.” Yuuri answers when Victor questions him about it during their rounds. “It just seems out of place these days.” He shakes his head softly as he casts his gaze out of the window. The steam from some of the outside pools is easier to see from here, infused with a burnt orange from the lanterns burning softly on the walls. “It’s a miracle the water is still there. Or that it stayed running after the twenty-second century.”

“What does it need? I can help.” He’s at Yuuri’s side in a second, watching the steam disappear into the shifting clouds above.

Yuuri chuckles and turns away. “Unless you’ve got wires made of gold that you don’t mind melting down and donating, I think you’re doing all you can right now.”

The words stick with him as he makes his way through the rooms, dutifully tidying as Yuuri checks all the heating units and automatic lights. He can clearly see where the budget has been stretched, especially with the number of staff he comes across. 

Or rather, doesn’t come across.

It’s a small number of workers, but everyone there greets him with a smile and a genial wave before quickly dashing off to whatever task they were in the middle of doing. He wishes someone had a minute to just… talk. He’s loves talking to Yuuri and he’ll always be grateful for his company and care, but he can’t deny that he had been secretly hoping to get a little bit more of a taste of humanity by venturing outside the apartment.

The other androids trundling around the premises aren’t really helping on that front either. He can’t exactly connect with them. Sure, if he talks to the cleaning unit or any of the kitchen bots they’ll flash a friendly answer on screen or give a curt answer in a tinny tone, but it’s not the same. Even if he and them are basically the same.

He doesn’t have the ability to feel nervous. At least, he thinks he doesn’t. But something about the way the other androids look at him makes something slightly unsettling flash through his mind. He knows they’re far too primitive to see his inner workings from a casual glance, but the way they took a solid second longer to respond to him than Yuuri did makes him wonder. 

_Do they know?_

He shakes the thoughts away immediately. It’s not logical.

None of the other patrons seemed to bat an eye at him wandering around, only occasionally asking for directions or more towels. Most seemed impressed that he was able to answer flawlessly in whichever language he could pick up from their accent, some even responding with some less-than-subtle flirtations. One red-faced woman had even leant in and quietly slurred about what ‘ _Russian tasted like.’_

Yuuri had pulled him away before he had the chance to answer. He hadn’t minded. It was good to see that most of their regulars were so friendly to him.

Even if it isn’t the same with the other machines. 

It’s all quick barked orders and a firm shove if they weren’t going fast enough. He picked up Yuuri’s loud sigh from the other side of the room when he’d noticed him looking over the fresh dents in one of the floor units, a mildly annoyed look etched into his face.

Something about it makes him feel a little uncomfortable.

Sure he looks human, sounds human, even acts like one- but underneath he has much more in common with the dishwasher than any of the guests. He’s programmed to do certain things, be a certain way. He’s friendly by design, human-like for some purpose that he doesn't know yet. Just like any other drios, he’s here to do the tasks set out for him and help any humans that need it. It’s not his place to have opinions on how they’re treated. They’re just objects. _Expensive_ objects. 

He decides to stop thinking about it.

He spends most of his time cataloging Yuuri’s work day to day and pitching in where he can. Aside from occasionally helping other staff move and clean things, Yuuri spends most of his time hunched over one or more of the service robots or adjusting some of the various climate panels in each room. He’s commented more than once about how they tend to play up day to day.

To Victor, it’s a bittersweet image.

He knows how talented Yuuri is. He’s seen as much from just a cursory search of his name online. He knows he shouldn't have an opinion on his personal life, but he can’t help but think about how he shouldn't be here. He should be creating the next generation of android, helping bring the world into the next technical revolution. Making a _difference_ to the human race.

He knows he can do it… and yet Yuuri acted like he couldn’t care less. He never liked to talk about his life before he left his job, only ever saying that, “it wasn’t the right fit for him.” Looking at all the intricate machines he’s patented and how carefully he takes care of all the robot parts that he hoarded in his tiny apartment, any idiot could see that those words really couldn’t be further from the case.

For the third day in a row, he bites his tongue on the matter and concentrates on helping him.

Well, he tries to.

For the first few rooms Yuuri insists that doesn’t need Victor’s input, telling him to go and help clean somewhere else. It’s more than a little frustrating.

“I’m here to help you know,” he chides as he pulls the sheets off the futon on the floor, throwing them out the door for the one of the cleaning droids to collect.

“And I don’t need it. Other people around here do,” Yuuri murmurs, not looking up from the panel he’s fiddling with in the corner of the room. A guest had complained that they couldn’t change the temperature. “God, what is wrong with this thing?” He bangs his hand against it in frustration, switching on the small monitor across the lenses on his glasses.

Victor rolls his eyes and pushes past, placing his hand on the screen and closing his eyes briefly. It doesn’t take long to access the system, each different part of it rolling through his mind until he finds the fault. “It’s disconnected from the other units in the room, but isn’t displaying as such,” he says as he queries the system, running a more thorough diagnostic. “It can’t sense the temperature.”

When he opens his eyes, Yuuri is looking at him with wide eyes.

“You can interface?”

“Not with anything with a good security system, but most basic programmes yes.”

“Can you fix it?”

“It’s a hardware fault.” He runs through the user manual that he’s found online, locating the relevant section. “We need to manually disconnect and reconnect the sensors.”

Yuuri closes his mouth, his surprise morphing into a more genuine smile. He reaches into his tool belt and throws a screwdriver towards Victor. “Get to work then.”

He catches it easily and walks towards the first sensor, finally satisfied.

For the first time since his activation, Victor feels useful.

***

Once the afternoon rolls around, they move to the upstairs rooms, checking them for electrical faults. It only takes a couple of hours, the combination of Yuuri’s skill and Victor’s ability to find any more difficult software problems meaning no piece of tech could give them any grief.

Once they’re finished, they start heading back downstairs when Victor notices one more door hidden away at the end of the corridor. “Oh you forgot this one,” he comments as he starts striding towards it.

He hears Yuuri drop something, his footfalls suddenly loud and quick behind him. “We don’t need to go in there-”

Victor has already opened the door before Yuuri can finish his sentence. 

He’s a little surprised at its contents. 

A quick look around shows that it isn’t a guest room, rather a personal bedroom. A personal bedroom that looks like it belongs to the biggest tech enthusiast in the world. It’s immaculately cleaned, the floor vacuumed, every inch polished and scrubbed. The only mess is the collection of various machine parts, scattered and labeled across the desk by the wall. There’s a small single bed in the corner, posters of famous robotics engineers and AI developers from the past twenty years covering every inch of that wall. 

Stepping inside, Victor doesn’t need three guesses to know who’s room this was.

“This was your room.” He murmurs as he turns towards Yuuri in the doorway.

Yuuri sighs quietly as he walks up next to him, a tinge of something distant and unreadable flickering across his expression. “My parents don’t want to take any of it down.” He says softly, turning a little to gaze at the wall by the door. “They were so proud of me.”

Following Yuuri’s gaze, he notices a large number of photos and news clippings carefully framed and stuck to the plaster. Taking a few steps forward, he realises that every one is an article or image of Yuuri during his career at G-Corp. He’d already come across most online, but seeing them all so lovingly printed out and hung up like this really makes it hit home just how much Yuuri had achieved in his young life. There are hundreds of stories about his developments, pictures from dozens of tech summits, the largest one of Yuuri standing confidently on a stage as he explains the latest product being launched and the breakthrough technology behind it. Technology that _he’d_ created.

It’s amazing.

“They should be proud,” he whispers as he scans the whole wall, smiling softening when he finds a few pictures of a much younger Yuuri clearly showing off his school awards, one of him in his graduation gown, his diploma gripped firmly between his fingers.

“We don’t need these here anymore,” Yuuri mutters quickly, standing in front of Victor in a poor attempt to block his view. “God, look at me.” He drags his fingers across the various print outs, smirking coldly at his younger self gripping a much more primitive version of Vicchan in his arms. “So chubby.”

“Do you have an issue with your weight?” 

Yuuri’s head snaps around to Victor’s. He looks shocked at the question. “What? Why would you ask?”

Victor doesn’t know why he said that. He hadn’t meant to ask, but it’s all Yuuri had mentioned whenever he saw younger pictures of himself. He isn’t any kind of licensed therapy droid but for some reason he just _has to know._ “You don’t seem very fond of any of these pictures,” he whispers gently as he steps around him to take a better look at some of the images. “Plus you keep commenting on how ‘fat’ you were.”

“Well I was,” he answers quietly. “I do make more of an effort to stay in shape these days.”

Victor has never seen Yuuri looked so defeated. He’s so happy and vibrant and _successful_ in these pictures, yet the only thing he’s able to concentrate on is his weight. If Victor had a heart, he’s sure it would be breaking right about now.

As a companionship unit, he isn’t going to let that stand.

“Yuuri.” Victor turns to him, each word enunciated clearly. “Trust me when I say the first thing someone notices about you is not your weight. Nor do I think it would be the second or the third.”

Yuuri raises an eyebrow. “So what would be the first thing then?”

Victor opens his memory bank and finds the first image he has of Yuuri, what the first thing he really thought about was. He didn’t really need to, it’s the same thing he’s noticed every day when Yuuri stumbled all soft and sleepy from his bedroom. “Well, aside from the fact it appears you aren’t very fond of combs, probably your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

“Well your glasses have such large frames. They make quite the focal point.”

His mouth breaks into an amused grin. “Uh, thank you?”

“Plus they’re very expressive,” Victor adds quickly.

Yuuri cocks his head. “What makes you say that?”

“You have this look when you’re really thinking about something.” He reaches out a finger, stopping just before he presses right between Yuuri’s eyebrows. “A little crinkle right here, like your brain is working a mile a minute, and then your eyes get so bright, especially when you’ve just figured something out. It just radiates out from your face.”

Yuuri takes a few seconds to respond, those bright coppered eyes large with thought. Eventually his small grin gets wider, a small laugh bubbling from his chest as he shakes his head a little. “Every time I think I have you figured out, you just keep surprising me.”

Victor can feel his smile stretch to match Yuuri’s, the fact that he cheered him up even a little making another kind of joy flash through his system. “Is that a good thing?”

Yuuri gently wipes his eye behind his glasses before answering in the cheeriest tone Victor has heard all day. “Yes.”

They both turn back to the pictures, looking at them in silence for a few more minutes.

“You know, it’s not my weight that bothers me about these pictures.” 

Victor turns to look at Yuuri when he starts quietly speaking again, his gaze focused on the picture in the centre. It’s him no older than about 12, shaking the hand of the hand of the founder of G-Corp, his young face splitting with excitement. “Most kids are chubby when they’re young. Sure I got called fat a lot and that kind of stuff does stay with you, but that’s not why I don’t really want to look at these anymore.”

“Then what is the reason?”

“I look at these pictures and I was just so-” He lets out a short sigh before turning to catch Victor’s eye. “Happy.”

The word is small but punches through the space like a bullet, the defeat in his tone sounding almost old. Like he’d spent years wrestling with the thought.

Victor wishes he could relate.

“And you’re not now?” He whispers, taking a small step towards him.

Yuuri drops his head for a second, hands clenching into tough little fists by his sides. “Not like I was there. Back then, all I wanted to do was build robots. It was my dream. And when that dream started to come true I poured my life into being the best.” He looks back up, reaching out to touch the same picture Victor is looking at. His voice is like a faraway breeze.  “And for a while I was.”

Victor can feel something between them change a little, a boundary about to be broken. Yuuri has never wanted to talk about any aspect of his past, and yet here he is, open and honest and… sad.

Victor presses a little further. He _has_ to know. Has to find some piece of the complex puzzle that is Katsuki Yuuri.

“So, what was the problem?” He murmurs as gently as he can. “Why did you leave that all behind?”

“It’s a long story.” The words are harder. Yuuri’s previous soft frame tightens like rubber band being stretched to its limit.

It doesn’t stop Victor.

“I’ve got time.”

“It’s not one I like to talk about.” The words are quick. Practiced. 

Victor takes another step forward. The space between them almost completely dissolved. “Are you sure. Maybe I can-”

“No Victor.” He’s stepping back immediately, quickly shaking his head. He deliberately avoids Victor’s eyes, quickly turning away and busying himself with a few spare parts laying on the desk in the corner.

Victor feels the defeat like a vice in his chest. He was _this_ close to getting some kind of answer, some piece of information to figure out how to help him. And he’s annoyed him _again._

He digs his nails into his palms, wishing for once that he could feel some kind of pain.

He really wasn’t turning out to be a very good companion.

“I’m sorry,” Victor eventually whispers in the still air between them watching the way his words move the minute particles of dust dancing in the air. Anything to avoid looking at Yuuri’s hunched form.

After a few seconds he looks down, relieved to see that Yuuri has relaxed a little at the words. He doesn’t turn around. “It’s fine,” he murmurs, putting the part he was fiddling with back on his desk. “I understand why people are curious. You’re not the first person to wonder and you definitely won’t be the last.”

Victor takes a tentative step towards him, desperate to patch the awkwardness. “I won’t ask again. I promise.”

Yuuri sighs again before slowly turning around.“Thank you.” the small smile on his face is genuine as he walks back towards him.

Victor is surprised when he reaches up to lift his fringe again, his fingers once again lightly pressing against the break in his forehead. His expression is blooming with soft curiosity, that same wrinkle back between his brows.

“When I look at someone like you, it just makes me remember why I left all the moret.” He doesn’t sound like he’s even talking directly to Victor as he quietly muses, fingers dancing delicately over his casing. It’s not an unpleasant feeling.

“Oh.” That strange feeling in his programming is back. Though right now, seeing Yuuri so relaxed and curious for once, he thinks he might actually like it. “In a bad way?”

“No.” Yuuri says as he finally pulls his hand away. “It’s complicated.”

As Yuuri adjusts his tool belt, Victor can sense that something between them has shifted. He can’t quite put his finger on exactly what, but it’s a start.

Yuuri does seem a lot happier now though.

“Come on, we’ve got a few more things to do before we leave.” Yuuri starts heading towards the door, flicking his head over his shoulder and giving another genuine grin as he goes. “You haven’t even seen the actual baths yet.”

Victor’s ears practically perk up at the thought. He jogs over to catch up with him. “Can I try them?” 

Yuuri laughs as they walk down the corridor. “I don’t even know if you’re waterproof.”

“I am. I swear.” 

Yuuri rolls his eyes and grabs onto Victor’s arm, pulling him with a little more force down the stairs, taking two at a time like a child, his voice just as joyful. “Well maybe we can save that for another time.”

Victor wants to ask again. Wants to solve together the mystery that is Katsuki Yuuri, but now it only feels like he has half the pieces. He’d already scoured every inch of the internet he could and found nothing helpful. Information was plentiful when he still worked for G-Corp,, but after he quit… nothing. There were various speculative pieces about why he left and what he was doing now, but none of the information had been made public. In the end, the world had moved on to other news stories, letting Yuuri’s light slowly extinguish while he hid away in his family’s onsen.

It was such a _waste_.

He shuts that thought away. It wasn’t his place to question what Yuuri’s motivations were or why he decided to leave. His purpose was to help him in his daily life and provide him with the companionship he wanted. Those instructions felt like they were burned into his memory, the first thing his programming told him when he was first switched on… and yet it was becoming more unsatisfying by the hour.

He knows he shouldn’t think that. Shouldn’t really have the capacity to think that, but aside from running his mandatory diagnostics there wasn’t a lot else he could do. Neither of them knew where he came from or even what kind of model he was based on. No instruction manual to be found. It was more than a little frustrating when he found himself pondering if he was supposed to be thinking like this, or if it was just a glitch.

He shakes his head to clear the thought as he’s pulled along by Yuuri.

No matter what, he was sure of one thing.

He has to find out more about him.


	2. Day 25 With Yuuri

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two of my reverse bang!
> 
> Make sure to check out the amazing accompanying mood board made by jfmesq [HERE](https://jfmesq.tumblr.com/post/186007653378/aaaaaand-here-is-the-moodboard-for-the-second)

**Log Date: Day 25 WY**

Victor isn’t sure if he truly has the capacity to be bored, but right now might be the closest he’s ever come.

And as a machine, that’s really saying something.

The dishwasher is on, Vicchan walked and serviced, every room immaculately tidied… and it isn’t even 10:00 AM. Yuuri’s apartment isn’t large, it isn’t even mid-sized by any stretch of the imagination so there are only so many times he can clean and sort everything before it just gets tedious.

He can practically hear his joints starting to rust from lack of proper use.

On any other day, they’d have already left the apartment and be on the way to the onsen, but today is one of Yuuri’s very few days off. Victor knows that he doesn’t like to take them, but his Mother had insisted, not wanting him to burn out. 

He was supposed to be useful, it’s one of his main purposes. With nothing to do and Yuuri seeming completely content locked away in his room, he can already feel his programme screaming at him to be productive.

It’s aggravating.

More than any other day, he wishes he had the ability to sleep. At least then he could waste some time. Or dream about more exciting things.

He sits rigidly on the sofa, running through his options and how useful each would be. He can sit here and do nothing until the dishwasher finishes running in 36 minutes, give Vicchan an unnecessary bath or idle away until Yuuri finally emerges from his room with some task for him to do. 

He doesn’t bother running the numbers about which option would be the most productive use of his time, perfectly aware that each would exert basically the same amount of tiny energy.

He drops his head back against the pillows, flicking his eyes up and down the white moulding of Yuuri’s ceiling. He wishes it was the first time he’d done that today. 

_24 cracks, 3 abandoned spiders’ webs, the plaster a composite material made from gypsum, aluminum and-_

He snaps his head down, suddenly wondering if he could be a bit more proactive about the whole situation. True, one of his main purposes is to do as Yuuri asked, but it’s also to keep him safe and _healthy._

He feels himself smile.

Surely staying inside all day wasn’t the best thing? Especially hunched over the tiny desk in the corner of his room. Victor had already made more than one joke about how soon Yuuri was going to be ringing the bells at Notre Dame and he did have the research to show the adverse effects of poor posture. He hadn’t wanted to listen.

Victor stands and turns on his heels towards Yuuri’s room, a new determination set in his mind. 

He had seen him briefly earlier, but only for a few seconds. He’d woken up before dawn like usual and blearily downed a coffee before grabbing a protein bar and walking back into his room mumbling something about some project he needed to finish.

That was four hours ago. He had to want to do something else by now. At least, Victor is fairly sure that he must. Even after almost a month, so much about Yuuri is still a mystery.

And today is the day a little more of that mystery is going to be solved. Victor is set on that.

When he walks into Yuuri’s room, Victor’s suspicion about him leaning over his desk is confirmed. He’s deeply focussed on his latest project, welding mask down, blue sparks flying from whichever part he was working on today. Right now he looks more metallic than Victor. It’s dim aside form the glow of his tools, blinds pulled down, all light muted and greyed.

He looks like he hasn’t moved in hours, shirt rumpled and pyjama bottoms still on.  

Victor sighs and walks past him to open the window. The sky is it’s usual characteristic grey, but it was a lot brighter than usual. He’s actually able to see some of the buildings in the distance without zooming in.

He turns and strides up to Yuuri’s side, smiling widely. “What would you like to do today?”

Yuuri puts his torch down and lifts up his welding mask a little. “Uh- this?”

“Come on, it’s your first day off in weeks and the sun is actually breaking through the smog barrier for once. You should go outside.” Victor knows he’s being a little devious here. True, he did want Yuuri to enjoy himself for once but it’s also true that he’d barely seen any of the city outside of Yuuri’s home and the onsen. The prospect of seeing literally any other sights is a wonderful thought to him. 

Yuuri flips his welding goggles down and goes back to fixing the unit currently strapped to his table. “I’m good right here, thank you very much.”

Victor huffs and quickly scrolls through the records he has saved from Yuuri’s personal file. “According to your latest medical records, you do have a slight vitamin D deficiency.”

Yuuri doesn’t stop welding, but Victor sees his shoulders tighten a little. “I’ve told you to stop looking into my personal records. It’s creepy.”

“As your personal unit, it’s my job to keep you healthy.” He leans an elbow on his desk. “And as someone who also genuinely cares about you, I’d like you to actually see the outside world once and awhile.”

“Victor. I’m fine.” His voice is a little shorter behind the metal of his mask. “I’m actually really busy right now.”

“But it’s such a nice day! I mean it’s still a little cold, but don’t you want to go to the ocean? Or a park or just-”

“Victor!” The sound of the welding torch hitting the desk reverberates around the room with an angry clatter. He doesn’t lift up his head but his hands are clenched into tight fists on top of his desk. “I’m fine right here. Don’t you have something else to be doing right now?”

Victor doesn’t reply immediately. He just straightens himself and walks towards the door, picking up his discarded pyjama shirt as he goes. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the bright glow of the torch as Yuuri goes back to his task, posture a little more rigid than before.

He walks out the room, whispering quietly as he closes the door with a soft click. “Sorry.”

Victor spends the next hour busying himself with every pointless household task he can find.

This is what he’s designed to do, what he told Yuuri he was going to do as long as he was in his care. These were facts, what any robot would have as a primary thought if they were in his position. No reason to think about anything else.

So why can’t he get the bite of Yuuri’s voice out of his head?

He thinks about deleting the memory and forcing himself to be cheerier but he just… can’t quite bring himself to do it. He needs to remember.

Remember what exactly he is and why he’s here. What he’s supposed to be doing.

He’s just finished taking the few pieces of crockery that Yuuri actually owns from the dishwasher when he registers someone else in the room. He doesn’t turn around, keeping his movements smooth and efficient.

“Victor. Hey.”

“Good morning.” He makes sure his voice is bright. The perfect response from the perfect unit. 

He senses Yuuri pad up behind him before he sees him lean down on the counter. He doesn’t look angry anymore, his eyes soft behind his glasses. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. That was rude.”

“There’s no need to apologise.” His words are still artificially sweet, smile stapled to his face. “I’m supposed to do what you tell me.”

“No you’re not.” The words are gentle as he reaches out to take the plate gripped in Victor’s hands and put it down next to him. “I mean, I know you’re programmed to, but there’s no reason for me to be such an ass.” His words sound genuine, the smile that accompanies them almost seeming embarrassed. “You have feelings too. And you can tell me if I’m hurting them.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does!” 

Victor’s eyes widen at the sudden strength of his words. He senses that he may have touched on something a little more personal, but is a little confused as to why.

He’d said nothing untrue. Nothing Yuuri did to him really mattered. Not really anyway. He was designed to complete tasks and do them as efficiently as he could. Politeness means nothing to him.

At least… it isn’t supposed to.

Yuuri takes a long breath, briefly looking down before he starts talking again. “Look I don’t want you here to be my- my possession.” He seems to wince a little at his own words. “You can talk back to me if you want, you can talk about your own ideas and suggestions all you like.” His voice gets more confident as he continues to talk, eyes sparkling with an intensity Victor has only seen when he’s crafting something complicated. “You’re not a thing so you don’t have to act like it. So please, believe me when I say that you deserve an apology.” He takes another breath and a small step forward, holding out his hand. “So I’m sorry.”

Victor takes a couple of seconds to process his meaning. He barely registers the fact that his own hand has lifted to grab Yuuri’s and shake it softly for a couple of seconds. “I- I forgive you.” It’s strange hearing those words come from his own mouth. As a machine, he doesn’t need the capacity to forgive. He’s supposed to do as he’s told, to apologise to whoever owned him if he somehow made a blunder. People don’t apologise to their appliances. Why did Yuuri feel like he had to?

_And why does it feel so good?_

“Thank you,” Yuuri whispers warmly. His smile softensas he releases Victor’s hand, his eyes crinkling a little around behind the thick lenses of his glasses. It’s another small thing Victor can’t help but find adorable.

Without another word he ducks around Victor’s side and grabs his mugs from the dishwasher, reaching up to put them back in the cupboard. Victor opens his mouth to protest but quickly shuts it, turning to grab the remainder and sort them. 

It’s a small, quiet moment but one Victor can already feel etched a little deeper into his memory banks. One where the power dynamics between them felt like they were changing ever so slightly yet again.

Not since Yuuri had spoken briefly about his past when they were at the onsen almost a month ago had he sounded so open and earnest. Victor had come to the very strong conclusion that he didn’t really like talking about his feelings nor any of his past achievements, no matter how great they were. Yuuri has so much in his life worth celebrating, yet for some reason Yuuri really doesn’t seem to see it that way. There was always the same cold shame that washed over his expression whenever it was brought up, the same few mumbled words quickly uttered before he immediately changed the subject to literally anything else. It always made Victor a little sad to see, but after exhausting every possibility to try and make him see how great he was,  he’d made the decision to stop pushing for information. 

He’s sure Yuuri will give him more when and if he’s ready, but before that he’ll just have to meet him where he is. 

He briefly looks over to Yuuri, currently scratching a stray piece of food from a plate, the tiniest flicker of annoyance pinched in his expression when it doesn’t budge. Victor laughs silently and shakes his head.

_Surprisingly, that doesn’t sound so bad._

Once the sides are clear, Yuuri turns to Victor with his hands abruptly clapping together.

“Right come on. We have to go.”

Victor raises an eyebrow. “Where?”

“You were right. We need to get out of the apartment.” He walks over to the coat rack by the wall and pulls off his scarf, quickly winding it around his neck. “I had a look to see if there was anything going on around the city and I found something I think you’ll like.”

Victor is at his side in an instant, excited as he imagines a child would be at the prospect of a surprise. “Really?” 

Yuuri chuckles and throws one of his other coats at Victor before walking around him with something Victor only can describe as cunning sparkling in his expression. “Yes, now come on.”

***

“So why don’t you have a car?”

Yuuri shrugs as he continues to read the latest news on his tablet, crossing his legs in his seat. “Using a car in the city is a nightmare.”

Victor nods and goes back to looking out the window, the buildings flicking past in a series of colourful smudges.

When they’d left the apartment, Yuuri had refused to tell Victor where they were heading, instead steering them on to one of the city’s overground trains. Besides that fact that this particular train terminated in the midst of the Central district, he has no idea where they’re heading or why. Yuuri was always smart enough to keep his browsing history hidden from Victor’s searches and he’d left no visible clues.

Much like Yuuri himself, it was a complete mystery.

Victor is used to knowing everything, always being given instructions well in advance of whatever needed completing, he’s never ever considered someone surprising him just for the sake of it.

It’s not the first time he’s encountered the unexpected with Yuuri. From the manner in which he acts, to the way he treats Victor, to the strange sensations that seem to spark in his programming whenever he’s around, it’s not quite the life he envisioned when he was first booted up. 

But right now, none of that is important.

He turns to the man sitting next to him, fighting the urge to fix an errant hair sticking in front of his ear.

All that matters is that he really couldn’t be more excited.

He reclines in his seat a little, stretching out his legs as he goes. “I know how to drive you know.”

A small smile flickers on Yuuri’s lips. “I bet you do.” He briefly stops scrolling on his tablet, looking up out of the window with that familiar faraway look in his eyes that Victor has gotten so used to seeing now and again. “In the end I sold it. When I left G-Corp I wasn’t doing any cross-country meetings anymore so there wasn’t much point keeping it.” The words are a little quieter, but he doesn’t exactly sound sad.

Victor leans in a little further. “Do you miss driving?”

“Eh not really. Public transport around the city is pretty good and I never have a reason to leave.” Yuuri turns his head to meet Victor’s gaze again, sunny smile back in place. “I guess I miss the freedom a little.” He opens the pictures on his tablet scrolling down until he brings up a picture of a _very_ nice looking Audi. It didn’t really seem to match Yuuri’s style at all. “God it was such a good model though.”

“Probably wasn’t helping with the smog. Plus the _traffic,”_ Victor interjects quickly, trying his best to keep the mood as breezy and bright as the weather outside.

Nothing was going to spoil the next few hours. _Nothing._

Yuuri chuckles a little. It’s not quite as warm as it usually is. “Yeah.”

They sit in silence for a few more stops. Yuuri goes back to the news story he’s reading, so Victor casts his gaze out of the window again. He really doesn’t mind, the view really is fascinating. As they get further towards the central district, the nicer the surroundings become.

He isn’t surprised. Everyone around the city knows that the closer you get to the centre, the more money gets poured into every aspect of the surrounding areas. From the buildings, to the pavements, to the people, everything just gets a little bit… cleaner. More prestigious. 

As they continue on, the tall grey slabs of the high rises and gaudy neon lights slowly start to dissipate, the swirls of smog choking the sky thinning until the sun can properly stream through in a soft gold wave. 

It’s fascinating to watch.

Victor puts his hand to his mouth when they pass the next stop. Pulling out of the station, the clouds have started to part, streaks of the softest blue peeking through like a stream carving through the crags of a mountainside. He’s snapping at least a dozen mental pictures before he even realises what he’s doing, zooming in as far as he can until the edges of the clouds were sharply in focus against the tiger stripes of azure.

He’s never seen the sky before. The _real_ sky. He wants to take advantage of every second he can, make a memory of something so rarely seen by those stuck in the further edges of the city.

He’s pulled out of his revere by the softest chuckle next to him. Turning around, he sees Yuuri hiding his quiet laughter behind his hand.

“What?”

“You’re already so impressed, it’s so adorable.” He quickly clears his throat, putting his hand down to reveal that full, sweet smile. The light from the sun suddenly feels a little stronger against Victor’s body. “I’m just wondering how you’ll react when you see where we’re actually going.”

“So where exactly are we heading then?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet?”

“Well we’re heading towards the centre of the city, but there’s over three-hundred different tourist attractions between the next stop and where this train terminates.” He carefully assess the facts he knows, but there are far too many variables to make any kind of accurate prediction. He shakes the list of places away from his eyes, focussing back on Yuuri’s face. “And that’s only the ones I’ve found advertised online.”

He laughs again and gently taps the side of his nose. “Well it _is_ a surprise.”

Victor rolls his eyes. “I’m hard to surprise you know.” 

“Well I can try.”

It’s Victor’s turn to laugh as he lies back in his seat and looks back out the window towards the rapidly brightening sky. “And I appreciate that.”

They continue to quietly chat about everything and nothing for the next half an hour. While apparently they aren’t near to their actual destination, Victor is grateful for this too. Even with a month together, they rarely had the time to just sit and _talk._ Between work and chores and Victor’s main duties either cleaning or helping Yuuri repair things at the onsen, he hadn’t really had the chance to get to know Yuuri properly. Understand what actually makes him tick.

It turns out Yuuri has anecdotes for days.

While he never liked mentioning his immediate past, Victor learns that, given the right circumstances, he’ll happily talk about his childhood with an unbridled joy. 

Stories about building his first tiny unit in his first year robotics class, how his parents wouldn’t let him have a dog, so Vicchan was built barely two weeks later, how after dumping cold water on him in the shower, he’d rigged Mari’s alarm clock to go off every 23 minutes on the dot after midnight. 

Victor listens attentively, taking in every tiny detail and logging it for later. He could listen to him talk for hours. It isn’t just the animated joy his voice takes on when he talks about his sister, but the way it just lit up his whole face. Victor makes another memory, the fond smile that melts across his expression like a gentle light across his features, the way his eyes crinkle softly when he grins, the soft hand movements dancing through the air as he illustrates his points. It’s all so… fluid.

He’s not sure he’s ever seen Yuuri so relaxed. It’s nice to see. 

Halfway through an anecdote about hacking one of Mari’s ex boyfriends email accounts, Yuuri’s eyes suddenly widen a little. “Ah, here we are.” He stands and heads towards the nearest train door, signalling for Victor to follow.

Stepping off of the train, Victor is surprised by how close they really were to the very centre of the city, already deep in the Central district itself.

 “I haven’t been here in so long,” Yuuri mutters as he looks around the station. “Glad to see some things never change.”

It really is apparent how far away they are from Yuuri’s tiny apartment. There isn’t a smudge of graffiti to be found anywhere as they exit the station, not a piece of litter or stone out of place anywhere around them. Everything around them just looked a little softer than in the outlying districts. No gaudy neon, or harsh grey structures uglying the horizon. The station itself seems designed after a large, more traditional central London station, everything red brick and polished steel, even the holograms shining from the walls somehow less invasive than those in the outer districts. As they step down from the platform, Victor almost stops in his tracks at the sudden flashes of plant life entering his vision. 

_Those couldn’t be._

Placed around the sides of the station were a variety of trees, shading passing passengers and growing intimidating and _green_ against the brightness of the sky. Victor zooms in a little and gasps again. They were definitely real.

“Wow.” He looks at the intricately drawn maps of the district on one of the walls, every attraction surrounding them looking like they could grace the cover of some lifestyle magazine. Victor doesn’t need to scan the clothes everyone else is wearing to know that only one of the passing outfits was probably worth more than a month of Yuuri’s rent.

He did have plenty of data about the surrounding area stored, but he’d never really had a reason to go through it in any real detail… and he’s glad. He likes the feeling of wonder that he can feel blooming in his mind at every new sight and smell washing over him.

It’s a wonderful sensation.   

He looks down and sees Yuuri a few paces away, laughing at his wide-eyed curiosity again. He quickly catches up, one thought suddenly starting to sour his high a little. “It’s nice, but everything here is just so-” _Expensive._ “Fancy.”

Yuuri’s smile doesn’t falter, clearly noticing the flash of worry telegraphed across Victor’s expression. “You aren’t wrong, but don’t worry.” He starts walking again, heading out into the sunshine, a bounce in his walk like he doesn’t have a care in the world. “I’m not breaking the bank.”

As an android Victor doesn’t really need to, but he makes himself breathe a sigh of relief. He’s been experimenting with some more human quirks, trying to make sure his cover is bullet proof. He knows it’s basically pointless, but having to remind himself to blink or shift or even breathe in the presence of other people is almost kind of exciting. It’s like he’s playing some kind of part, acting in a play rather than hiding his very being behind a facade of twitches.

He frowns at the tail end of that thought but decides to ignore it. Right now he’s walking in the sunshine, the _real_ sunshine and he’s off to an unknown destination for the first time in his short activation. There’s no time for cold thoughts now.

No reason to remember that they’re both supposed to be hiding him.

***

If the train station was a wonder, then the streets of the district are another story all together. 

It’s like they’ve stepped into another world. 

Even if he’d properly researched the area before the came, he’s fairly certain that _nothing_ could have prepared him for the sheer vibrance of everything around them.

There’s colour everywhere. He’s used to that around Yuuri’s apartment, especially at night, but Victor never realised how different colours could look. Everything in the more remote districts was more artificial and loud. It’s all bright neons and blaring lights that blinded you if you looked too closely. Even during the day, the signs and street lamps could easily blur together in an aching sea of synthetic brightness, perhaps to try and counteract the thick sheets of grey that swirled in the sky and around the tops of the buildings. Each office block seemed to climb higher and higher every week, like they were trying to escape the migraine-inducing chaos below.

Everything here was so much _softer._ Just having the benefit of real sunlight to illuminate each immaculately cleaned road brought so much more life to the area, made it feel warmer. There were still buildings that towered to the sky, but they weren't half as intimidating. None bowed to the classic blocky structure, nor to the greyed colour scheme of district barely a few miles away. Each was bent and sculpted into strange yet stunning shapes, giving the skyline more of a character. Some were painted with a variety of pastel shades, some entirely made of softly shaded glass, standing more like crystal giants or huge pieces of flora bursting out of the asphalt. By the time they reach the end of the road, he’s picked up the signature styles of at least a dozen famous architects and designers, like each building was trying to out do it’s neighbours in terms of flair.

There are more than a hundred different types of tree lining the streets, each carefully pruned. He does find it a little strange that each were blooming bright and green despite it approaching winter, but he doesn’t doubt that the district's council had more than enough money to make sure that the perfect view of their streets was sullied by bare branches or dead leaves.

There’s more than one small service robot quietly rolling around, repainting corners and collecting anything that could dirty the street. More than one person had casually tossed their coffee cup on the ground and kept walking, the small droids grabbing and scrubbing the ground of any wayward coffee barely ten seconds later. It’s impressive efficiency.

“Wow, those are the latest models,” Victor absentmindedly murmurs as he watches one slowly roll past them to brush up a few leaves that had fallen from a nearby birch. “You know I’m sure that they’re running on the same programme that you helped-” He stops talking when he realises that Yuuri is no longer by his side. Turning around, he notices that Yuuri has paused a few feet back, eyes focussed somewhere high above across the other end of the street.

“Yuuri?” He jogs back over and follows his eyeline until he’s looking at a smaller building standing about half a kilometer in the distance. A cursory scan shows it to be a residential building, large but probably only big enough to house a few apartments judging by the average build of luxury retail around this area.

Yuuri blinks himself back to reality, his distant expression snapping back into focus as he turns to Victor. “Sorry, it’s just-” He quickly fixes his slightly pinched frown, pushing a smile back on his face and pointing to the place he was just staring at. “I used to live there.”

“That building?”

Yuuri nods, sighing quietly. “20th floor.”

Victor shifts his gaze up to that floor, eyes widening when he realises it’s just below the penthouse. “Wow.”

The listing for the apartment is in front of his eyes almost instantly, pictures of luxury and convenience scrolling past his vision. It has everything: a gym, a pool and space to comfortably fit at least one hundred people.

“I know what you’re doing. Please don’t.”

Victor shuts the website and looks back down to Yuuri, a little confused.

“Don’t what?”

Yuuri sighs again and turns away from the building. “Don’t look up how much it costs.”

His voice has the same wintery cool from when he was talking about his old car. Victor feels a similar cold flash briefly in his chest. 

“Oh. Okay.” He quickly turns as well and starts to walk away. “I’m sorry.”

Yuuri walks with him, shaking his head just a little. “It’s fine. It’s in your nature after all.” There’s no spite in his voice, but it has the same rueful whisper from his gaze. “I don’t miss it. Really.”

Victor opens his mouth but quickly closes it, for once unsure of what to say. He knows he’s lying, he didn’t have to be an android to pick up on that, but he knows that saying that won’t help the situation. Then again, he knows anything else he might say will probably sound very artificially sincere. He can’t lie to Yuuri. Physically. He can’t say his life is better now or it’s better that he left everything behind for basically nothing in return, because that isn’t even remotely true. He isn’t even completely sure how Yuuri affords to live in his current apartment considering how low his wages at the onsen really are.

So what can he say to make him feel better?

Yuuri can apparently see the conflicting pieces of his programme screaming in his mind so reaches out to touch his arm, laughing softly. “Okay maybe I miss it a _little_ .” He gazes at the trees lining the streets and back to the various buildings they’re slowly walking past. “I miss the views. I miss the space. I even miss my neighbours a little.” He slows and looks over to one of the small cleaning droids picking up a water bottle that someone has just thrown from a window. “I just… don’t miss the _life._ It wasn’t really me.”

Victor nods slowly, another small flicker of understanding unfurling in his mind. 

He was right. Objectively he can see that that apartment is the picture of luxury, something that people in the outer city limits spend their lives dreaming about, but he just can’t imagine Yuuri there. It might be nonsensical, or even cruel to think that the one he’s programmed to make happy doesn’t belong in the most lavish environment available, but Victor just can’t quite imagine him there, all alone with his tiny poodle with so much space around him. He almost bites back a laugh at the vision of him _actually_ styled in something other then the same ten shirts, half of which are covered in some kind of oil that just _can’t shift_ no matter how hard he tries.

Though he can’t deny how good he probably does look in a three piece suit. 

“You probably don’t think that’s logical,” Yuuri continues, his eye not quite meeting Victor’s as they continue to walk.

“It’s not my place to have an opinion on that.”

“Everyone does,” he murmurs a little more sharply than before. The irritation flavouring his tone sounds old. “Why I gave up so much for seemingly so little.” 

Victor stops walking and turns to Yuuri fully, head cocked slightly. “Perhaps. But answer me this.” He regards his face carefully, making sure each word that comes from his own mouth registers with the gentlest sincerity that he can muster. “Are you happy? Right now. Are you happy?”

Yuuri takes a second to respond. At first he seems a little confused why Victor would ask such a question before his expression melts, eyes widening in understanding. His lip corners upturn into the softest smile. “Well, definitely more than I was.”

Victor nods again, smile growing to mirror Yuuri’s. “Then that’s all that matters.” 

As they stand facing each other for another second, Victor can’t help but notice that this is the first time he’s regarded Yuuri properly in full sunlight, how the brightness brings more of a pinkened warmth to his skin. Everything about him just seems a little less tired, the way the richness in his eyes shift like honey in the brightness, the slight golden undertone to his complexion more prominent in the shifting light beating down on them. It’s actually sort of beautiful, something he knows he hasn’t thought about Yuuri before. 

He’s lifting his hand to touch the side of Yuuri’s cheek without thinking, wondering if it felt as hot as his did right now.

_How inappropriate!_

His hand freezes by his side, programming is suddenly screaming at him as embarrassment punches through his system at what he was doing. He quickly ducks his head away and starts heading a little more promptly down the street, trying to ignore such a stupid glitch. “So where exactly are we going then?” he quickly adds as he walks. He hears how his voice is a little more rushed than usual but hopes Yuuri doesn’t notice. He really doesn’t have a good answer as to why.

Yuuri closes the distance, an eyebrow raised and a finger pointing over the other side of the street. “Just over there actually.”

Victor follows Yuuri’s finger, slowing his pace when he sees their destination coming more clearly into view beside them.

“A park?”

“Yup.” Yuuri smiles as they wait by the crosswalk. “I thought it would be nice.”

“It certainly looks it,” Victor murmurs as they approach. Much like many of the features blooming around Central, he’d also never seen a real park before. Most of the outer limits of the city preferred to use their space for business or housing with the atmosphere far too polluted to sustain any real plantlife. The acres of green in front of them remind him more of the sprawling decorative gardens boasted by distant countries, the array of lush plant life and cool soft stretches of grass more akin to the Botanical gardens of London or Majorelle than the usual images conjured when someone says the word ‘park.’ 

“Wow.”

Yuuri laughs again. It’s quickly becoming one of Victor’s favourite sounds. “You’ve been saying that a lot today.”

“Are you surprised?” Victor says as he takes in the sheer variety of plants he can already see planted in neat rows beyond the gate. “Look at this place.”

“I used to love coming here. It was a great to place to clear my head if things were getting stressful.”

Victor doesn’t comment, deciding firmly that he’s already pried enough into Yuuri’s past for today and that he didn’t want to risk anything else spoiling what was already such a perfect day. 

As they approach, he notices the line of people waiting patiently to get in, but Yuuri steers him around them, walking him to a smaller gate to the side. There’s a man standing there, but he seems to recognise Yuuri, tipping his hat and waving him in with a smile.

Victor raises an eyebrow. “Old friend?”

“No. Just someone I met when I was here last,” Yuuri says absentmindedly as they walk onto the grass in front of them.

Victor is about to question when something else registers a little more strongly on his sensors. They haven’t entered a building and yet the temperature has increased by at least twenty degrees. Victor closes his eyes and does a quick scan of the immediate environment.

24 degrees to be exact.

“It’s so warm here,” he says when he opens his eyes, looking around for any sort of mechanism in place to cause such a shift in temperature. “Far too warm for November.”

Yuuri nods as he shucks his jacket and starts unbuttoning his outer shirt a little. “This park has atmospheric converters, they can keep it as warm as they like all year.” He casually reaches over to unzip Victor’s own coat as he continues. “Usually they make it snow around Christmas time for the annual Festive Fairs.”

Victor continues to look around until he notices the tiny mechanisms in place, carefully installed around the edges of the flower beds. He has heard of such tech, but he’s also aware of how expensive it is to install and run and how rare they are as a result. 

“That’s amazing,” he remarks as he pulls off his coat. He doesn’t have the capacity to sweat, but it would look pretty suspicious if he was the only one walking around with a coat on during such gorgeous weather.

“I know, right?” The brightness to Yuuri’s voice matches the glow on his face. Victor’s heard it before, whenever he talks about technology he’s really proud of. Idly he wonders if that’s one of the reasons he brought them here today.

“Here I’ll take that.” Yuuri grabs the jacket from Victor’s arms and gently moves him towards a corkboard hammered into the ground that a few people are already looking at. “I’ll put these away, why not have a read about the event today?”

He watches with curiosity as Yuuri scurries away, but does as he’s asked, happily taking in the scenery blooming around him. Even a cursory glance at the lush expanse of plants exploding throughout the area showed this not to be any ordinary park, even for one with such astronomical funding. 

There are flowers. A lot of flowers. Far too many flowers for a park to reasonably have and take care of all year. Unless-

He approaches the sign nailed into the ground and scans it quickly.

_Oh._

“This is the floral week they hold twice a year,” he murmurs when Yuuri rejoins him, awe unfurling through him that they were at such a prestigious event. 

_How could he have not already pieced this together?_

“Yup,” Yuuri comments cheerfully, following Victor’s eyeline to where he’s reading about the history of the event. “It’s world famous.”

He isn’t joking. The annual week they hold here is arguably one of the most famous botanical events in recent history. It wasn’t uncommon for experts from around the globe to visit and lecture on certain species, along with celebrities and world leaders coming to bask in the sunlight and gaze at the rare plant species only a garden such as this could cultivate.

It’s a wonder, but Victor can’t help the twinge of panic starting to brew in him as he considers _how_ Yuuri could have got them into something like this. He turns to him, trying to hide the slight worry in his voice. “Yuuri, this is _incredibly_ expensive.”

Yuuri keeps smiling at the statement, comfortable expression not dropping an inch. “Don’t worry about it. Before I left my previous job, I actually helped design the watering system. It’s part of the reason they can have so many plants around here.” He turns and starts guiding them further into the park. “After it was all installed they gave the whole team their own choice of events to visit for free. I hadn’t booked anything yet so… here we are.”

Victor stops walking, his explanation flagging up several more alarms in his system.  “You should have saved that.” His system is yelling at him that this was all a big mistake. He should have brought friends or family or an actual human being at least. Not the android that’s main function was to clean his home and help him work. True, his purpose was companionship, but it didn’t make sense to bring a machine to an event that was so renowned, that thousands of real people _dreamed_ about attending.

Yuuri frowns a little, looking a little confused at his words. “Why? You were right. It’s nice to be out.” He reaches over the gently touch the side of his arm, his voice lowering to a more velvety whisper. “And I wanted to bring _you_.”

Victor isn’t sure what to say to that. On the one hand, his system still thinks the same, that it was a waste for him to be here, and yet Yuuri _wanted_ him to be here. He hadn’t forced him, hadn’t made Yuuri take him here and it’s clearly what he wanted to do. He can’t argue with that.

_And, truth be told, he wants to be here. So badly._

He smiles down to Yuuri, keeping his expression as soft as he can make it, his tone matching. “Thank you. So much.”

He means it. Never has he seen such wonder then what’s currently growing around him, and he’s fairly certain he’s probably the first personal unit ever brought here and not expected to work. He’s expected to enjoy himself.

It’s a nice thought.

Yuuri returns the gentleness of his smile as he starts walking again. “You’re quite welcome. Now come on, there’s a lot to see.”

***

They spend the rest of the morning slowly wandering the park. 

Yuuri wasn’t joking, there certainly was a lot to see. Strolling away from the entrance, there are a plethora of pots and flower beds dotted down various gravel paths carefully sunk into the grass. Explosions of vibrant pastel petals blossom in a variety of different shapes and sizes, some planted in intricate patterns in the soil around them. Victor stops in his tracks to admire one garden carefully styled to portray two love birds in flight, trimmed yellow and green daisies blooming softly next to a small patch of burnt orange marigolds shaped into their beaks. He really isn’t sure he’ll ever see something more beautiful until Yuuri steers him to the next flower bed, the portrait of a figure skater brought to life in hues of pink and white, gliding across a rink of forget-me-nots.

Victor wonders if he’s able to run out of memory with the amount of pictures he’s stopped to take. 

“You know this really reminds me of Canada,” Yuuri comments as they walk over to admire the large bed of sunflowers towering like yellowed giants above them.

“Canada?”

Yuuri nods as he holds out his phone to take his own pictures. “I was in Ottawa on business a few years back. Turns out my trip coincided with the Canadian Tulip Festival.” His face is soft and bright as he speaks, it obviously a good memory. “They’re lucky that they still have the natural atmosphere to do it every year. They’ve been running it since the 1950s.”

Victor turns back to the sunflowers in front of them, wondering how different that particular festival would be compared to here. “I wish I could see it.”

“I have pictures.” Yuuri moves his phone in front of Victor’s face and starts scrolling.

Victor gently puts his hand on top of the screen and pushes it away. He tries to keep his smile set in place despite the slight coldness he can suddenly feel swirling like the tiniest flurry of snow in his chest.

_He really needs to check these glitches out._

“No I mean, actually see it,” he murmurs. He already has the images of the festival rolling in front of his eyes, unable to resist looking it up. “ I mean I know it’s impossible for me to travel, and there’s no point for me to really unless you were but-”

He stops, suddenly unsure of what his point was. He knows he can’t travel anywhere outside the country, or even the city really. Even the most basic airport scanner would instantly pick up that he was mechanical which would mean instant deactivation. Even if he could get past that, he has no passport, no I.D, not even a surname to give any authorities. And even if he could go, there was no point. He was built for _companionship._ It’s hardwired into his brain, protocol one. Do what _Yuuri_ wants. No reason for him to want to travel.

_So why did he-_

“Victor, are you okay?” Yuuri’s smile has dropped slightly, Victor’s confusion clearly showing on his face. “Do you-”

“You want to see the corpse flower?” He quickly cuts Yuuri off, grabbing his hand and dragging him towards one of the specialised tents set up at the edge of the park.

He sees Yuuri open his mouth to question him, but he quickly shuts it as they stop outside the tent. He just reaches up to brush some pollen from the edge of his glasses, voice happy again. “That sounds great.”

They have to go through two sets of doors inside the tent, disclaimers and warning signs everywhere about the delicate environment the plant had the be kept in. Victor isn’t surprised. While the park had the technology to keep most plants happy, some were either too delicate or just too rare to keep outside.

Or in _this_ plant’s case, a very special reason.

“This is one of the last ones left in the world,” Victor comments as they wait to be let in the room, every article he could find about it already downloaded into his memory. “Since most of its environment was destroyed during Indonesia’s third technical revolution, they only exist in man-made gardens these days.”

“Who needs Wikipedia, when I have you?” Yuuri gently teases, waving to the security as they let them and a few others inside.

Victor chuckles. He’s heard the joke multiple times at this point but it’s still cute.

The plant stands proudly in the centre of the small room behind a thick rope, huge stamen poking out the top of a large, bell curve bloom. It’s quite the sight compared to the small flower heads casually swaying outside.

He turns to Yuuri and instantly bursts out laughing at the disgust scrunched on his face, the sleeve of his shirt covering his nose.

“Oh wow that’s pungent,” he gasps as he backs away from the plant a little, eyes already watering from the powerful stench currently being emitted from the flower.

Victor nods and turns back to it. “Indeed.”

“Wait.” Yuuri is by his side again, an eyebrow raised but hand still over his nostrils. “Can you not smell it?”

“No I can, I just don’t smell things the same as you.” He taps the side of his nose. “It’s not just for decoration, but it’s more for analysing what’s in the air. I don’t really have a baseline of what smells _good_ or not.”

Yuuri squints his eyes and coughs loudly, clearly having just inhaled through his nose by mistake. “Believe me, you don’t want to know.”

“The reason it smells so bad is to attract pollinating insects, the primary ones being the flesh-eating variety.”

Yuuri nods, now two hands over his face. “Hence the name.”

“They can actually heat themselves up to body temperature to further fool any insects nearby. The flies will land on them thinking it’s food and then fly off with the pollen on their legs when they find out that isn’t the case.”

“Quite the enthusiast aren’t you?” 

The voice that questions him is unfamiliar. Victor turns to the source and suddenly notices the older woman standing beside them. She’s wrapped in possibly the most expensive silk blouse Victor has seen all day and has a sweet, curious smile on glossy, red lips.

Victor chuckles at the sudden comment. “You can say that.”

She turns back to the flower, her own hand coming up to cover her nose, words muffled a little by the leather of her gloves. “I always thought this plant actually ate people.”

“Oh no. It’s not carnivorous despite the scary name.” He had been a little confused when he first read it’s title, but was fascinated as he downloaded more information. Sure it had a disgusting name and scent, but that didn’t stop him from thinking it was beautiful. 

Even if it is fleeting. 

He turns back to the woman, surprised to see her looking at him expectantly with a curious spark in her eyes. “We’re actually really lucky. By tomorrow, the whole pant will have collapsed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s a shame.” He looks over the flower, the tall mid-section already looking like it was weakening and ready to collapse and rot. “It only blooms for two days a year.” 

The woman shakes her head a little, reaching into her purse to pull out her own camera to take a picture. “That is a pity.”

He goes to continue talking but quickly shuts his mouth. Both him and Yuuri are here incognito. Even with this event already full of botanical enthusiasts, he really doesn’t want to draw more attention to them.

One mistake. That’s all it would take.

Victor quickly clears his throat and starts to edge away, trying to catch Yuuri’s eye as he goes. “Well I shouldn’t keep you. I’ll just-”

“Don’t stop please.” The woman takes a step towards him, a small glimmer of disappointment flickering across her face. “There aren’t any garden staff in here and it’s just so interesting.”

Victor bites his lip. He wants to, _really_ wants to and yet the one explicit instruction that had been given to him by Yuuri barely ten minutes after being activated was to keep a low profile. Be as invisible as he can.

The woman takes in his hesitation and takes a small step back, her kind smile still in place. “That is if you don’t mind. I understand if you’re busy.”

Her voice sounds genuine, nothing about her suggesting that she might suspect, nor that she was demanding anything from him. 

Victor subtly flicks his eyes over the top of her  head to where Yuuri stands. Surprisingly, he just smiles and gives a slight nod, walking around to stand next to her.

“You should.”

Victor is taken back a little by his words.

Yuuri is more paranoid than anyone when it comes to Victor, every terrible eventuality played out in his mind before they went anywhere. It’s usually Victor who was the one trying calm him down, reassuring him with the scenarios he’s able to run with a more objective eye. Having Yuuri openly encourage him to flaunt the skills he has as an android is something he’d never thought he’d see.

He studies Yuuri’s face carefully, looking for any hint of worry or regret about what he’s just said. A new excitement starts to spread in his system when he finds none, one obvious conclusion drawn in the front of his mind.

_Maybe he really does trust him to know when to stop._

Either way, he isn’t going to waste this opportunity.

Victor walks with purpose in front of the flower, putting his hands together and smiling down at both Yuuri and the woman in front of him. “Okay then. Believe me there is a _lot_ to say.”

He talks for another half an hour, covering every point he downloaded. He makes sure never to be too specific about numbers, nor just read any articles verbatim. He adds all the correct pauses and verbal stumbles that any real human might have, moving his hands to point to the various parts of the plant as he goes. After the first ten minutes, he’s gathered quite the crowd, people of all ages standing to listen to him. Something about the flashes of interest and enjoyment he can see settling on people’s faces as he speaks has a real sense of fulfillment sparking in his chest. 

All too soon, the security waves at them from the back, telling them that their time was up and the next crowd is ready to go in. He hastily draws his little lecture to a close, profusely thanking everyone around him for listening and waiting for them all to start filling out before following with Yuuri.

“I hope that wasn’t too inconspicuous,” Victor murmurs as they walk into the brightness outside.

No one watching had looked even remotely suspicious of him, nor had any made a bee line for the exit or pulled out a phone to call him in. 

He was still curious for Yuuri’s opinion on it all though.

Yuuri just laughs a little, finally pulling his hands away from his face to breathe in the clean air outside the tent. “Not at all. A lot of Botanical professors come to visit so I doubt you’re the only one giving a lecture right now.”

“Good to see I might have a career as a teacher in the future.”

“You might need a last name before you can do that,” he hums. “You can be professor-”

“Katsuki.” The word is past Victor’s lips without him really thinking. It’s not that the notion of picking a last name hasn’t crossed his mind before, but Yuuri’s always seemed the most convenient.

“What?” Yuuri whips round, eyes scrunched with a little confusion as they continue to walk.

Victor shrugs. “Well I am yours. I think it has a nice ring to it.”

Yuuri exhales slowly. The sound is a little familiar, the same long sigh that usually preceded Yuuri either nagging or correcting Victor about something he’s interpreted. It always makes him a little uncomfortable to hear.

“Remember what I said earlier Victor,” Yuuri murmurs, briefly stopping and turning to him fully. “Be your own person.”

He takes a second to process Yuuri’s words. It’s a sweet sentiment, the same he’d said earlier before they left the house True, it’s completely ridiculous to say such things to a machine, and yet Victor is so sure that he really means it. The soft earnest whisper to his tone, the fact that they were _here_ just because he wanted to bring Victor was all evidence to back it up, and who was he to argue with that?

He holds Yuuri’s gaze, keeping his words gentle and softly honest as he replies. “I know. But I still think it sounds nice you know?”

Yuuri looks a little surprised by Victor’s response, Victor in turn surprised by the faintest dusting of colour blooming on Yuuri’s cheekbones as they look at eachother. He wants to question, to tease, but Yuuri is already clearing his throat and quickly making his way over to the other end of the park, words a little more hurried than usual. “Come on, they have some proper Sakura blossoms over here.”

***

For once, Victor is grateful for shade.

After hours of slowly walking around under the constant permeating brilliance of the afternoon sun, he can feel his casing starting to burn a little under his skin. While it’s not an entirely unpleasant sensation, he’d also rather not even sustain any minor damage while in public.

Thankfully, with a few minutes in the shadows a quick diagnostic and he should be ready to go again. 

Yuuri had walked off a few minutes ago to use the bathroom, suggesting that Victor stay here and ‘keep enjoying himself.’ The sparkle in his eye accompanied with the slight smirk curling around his words had Vitor wondering if the bathroom was where he was actually going, but the prospect of spending more time in the sweet outside air was really too much of a distraction for him to think too much about it.

Though he’s not really thinking about much at all right now.

Laying under a neatly trimmed cherry tree with his head pillowed again his bent arm and nothing but the cool of the grass beneath him, he’s not sure if he’s ever been this happy to be idle.

Slowly tracing patterns in the tissue paper clouds lazily floating above, one thought quietly dances to the front of his mind but sits there, a little louder in it’s curiosity.

_Is this relaxing?_

He doesn’t need to relax. As a machine, it’s in his nature to always be efficient one-hundred percent of the time and yet... he can’t help but find this nice.

Once again he can feel two parts of his mind screaming contradictory statements at him, about what he _should_ be doing, but for once he just doesn’t have it in him to care right now.

The shadows of the tree branches shift a little in the gentle breeze, tiger stripes of sunlight flitting across his torso in a warmed caress. The petals of the sakura blossoms dance a little with the movement, a few escaping from the wood and lightly drifting down like a pinkened rain around him. He laughs quietly as one lands on his cheeks, as gentle as a kiss on his skin. He blows softly so it slowly drifts away.

Watching it twirl down to the ground, he can’t help but wonder if that is what a kiss would actually feel like.

He reaches up with his other hand to lightly press the spot on his cheek, resting it there for a few seconds before slowly dragging it to his bottom lip. It’s a surprisingly nice feeling. 

He knows it’s silly to think about, that it’s not really something relevant to any situation right now, but he has been having more than a few rather illogical thoughts recently.

_He really does need to run a full system scan soon._

He pushes the thought to the back of his mind, stretching out and inhaling deeply to enjoy the sweet atmosphere around him. There’s a mixture of different scents permeating the air. He breathes in slowly, concentrating carefully on each one:

_Honey, roses, damp soil and… something else._

He slowly inhales again, a little harder. It’s something richer, something sweeter and something getting closer with each passing second. He closes his eyes to analyse the composition of the air in a little more detail. Steam, sugar, heating plastic-

“Enjoying yourself?”

He cracks an eye open to see Yuuri standing over him, smile on his face and pink cup in his hand. Steam billows up from inside, softly smudging the edge of his glasses.

_Ah. Tea. That was it._

He returns Yuuri’s smile, the sunlight overhead shadowing the contours of his face so he’s a darker silhouette against the sky. It’s a pretty picture to look at. 

“Very much so,” he murmurs lazily as Yuuri sits down next to him, taking a long sip of his tea.

“I really haven’t seen this much green in so long,” Yuuri says quietly, leaning back against the tree and slowly looking around the long stretch of lawn in front of them. There’s the tiniest note of melancholy to his tone.

“It’s hard to maintain,” Victor softly interjects, leaning in a little with a gentle smile. “Do you want to know the average cost it takes to run this place daily?”

Yuuri’s proper smile returns as he flicks his eyes over to Victor. “Oh believe me I already know.” He reaches back with his free hand to slowly run it down the rough bark of the tree behind him. “I mean it’s so nice that this can all be here, but-” he takes a quick breath, looking down to the grass below them. “Maybe it could be used for something else?”

Victor cocks his head. “Like what?”

“It would be nice to have at least one or two patches of actual plantlife near my place,” Yuuri continues, moving his hand to drag through the soft baldes below them, a few breaking off and tangling in his fingers as he goes. “Don’t you think so?”

Victor thinks it through. Logically, he knows there’s no way any kind of plant life would be able to survive for very long outside anywhere near Yuuri’s apartment. It’s not just that the air far far too polluted, he knows that someone would either steal or destroy it, plants a clear symbol of both wealth and social status. There was a reason all the better places in the therapy district had real potted plants behind their windows. 

And yet, he _can_ imagine how nice it would look. How refreshing it would be to have some real organic colour amongst the sea of metal and neon, to sit somewhere with slightly cleaner air after spending days surrounded by ash and smog. 

Victor sits up and leans back against another part of the tree, words a little faraway as he speaks. “Yeah. It really would.”

They sit in a comfortable silence for a while. Victor continues watching the gentle movements of the plants around them and picking out the different scents in the air while Yuuri slowly finishes his tea. Once the plastic cup is discarded in the nearest bin, Yuuri slowly kneels in front of Victor with a brighter expression as he rifles through his bag.

“I almost forgot!” There’s a sudden excitement to his tone as he turns back to Victor, that same sparkle from earlier dancing fervently in his eyes. “Close your eyes.”

Victor raises an eyebrow but complys, happy for Yuuri’s sudden enthusiasm for whatever he’s doing.

He feels Yuuri’s fingers gently brushing across the top of his head, something being adjusted just above his brow before his fingers are gone. He goes to question, but the click of a camera shutter quietly reverberates through the air before he has a chance.

“Okay you can look now.”

When Victor open his eyes, he’s met with a picture of himself on Yuuri’s phone that he clearly just took. He looks the same as ever, but with one notable exception now adorning his head.

Carefully placed around his head is an intricately laced flower crown made of fully bloomed blue roses. Each separate flower must be at least the size of his fist, soft and fragrant as they sit against his skin in a beautiful pattern against the silver of his hair.

Something inside him feels like it short circuits at the image.

“Wow.” Victor can feel his grip on any language stored in his programme slipping away from him, the fact that Yuuri had got him a _gift_ just for the sake of it “Yuuri, these are beautiful.”

“I thought blue would look nice on you.”

Victor reaches up to brush his fingers across the flowers, eyes widening at the soft waxy feel of the petals against his skin.

_No. They couldn’t be-_

“Yuuri, these are real,” he says as he analyses the composition of the flowers in a little more depth with the sensors in his fingers. It doesn’t take more than a second to confirm that they are definitely one-hundred percent organic. He looks back to Yuuri, his mouth suddenly feeling very dry. “They must have cost a fortune.”

Yuuri shrugs, smile not faltering. “I know how to preserve them. That way we can keep them forever.”

_Forever._

The word sticks like a thorn from one of the roses around his head in his mind.

Honestly, Victor has been trying not to think about it: how long his life really is. As a machine, he knows that as long as he has functioning parts and someone to service him then he could keep running indefinitely.

Theoretically that is.

There are a thousand reasons why that might not happen, the probabilities of some only increasing each day he remains activated.

He’d been beyond lucky to end up in the care of one of the greatest technological minds in the world, but he knows that even Yuuri might not be enough. Not forever anyway. Neither of them know where he really came from, Yuuri himself admitting that so much of Victor’s programme was still a mystery to him.

Victor knows it would only take one bad accident and then there’d probably no one alive who could fix him.

One gun shot through his head and he’d be out of commission for good.

He was lucky that the first time he’d only had his memory unit ripped out, doubly lucky that it was someone like Yuuri who found him. Anyone else probably would have either stripped him for parts or reported him as an illegal piece of technology and had him immediately destroyed.

That particular end is still very much a possibility.

As an android, the thought of being deactivated doesn’t really scare him that much. He can’t feel pain, he doesn’t have a life, at the end of the day if he’s taken away, the world won’t change. But that isn’t what he’s worried about. Isn’t the one thing that he can say actually makes him feel what he assumes real fear actually is.

He takes in the smiling man in front of him. Zooming in, he can see the tiniest lines starting to etch more permanently around the corners of his eyes, like paper that’s been lightly folded.

_Yuuri won’t live forever._

Victor feels something cold flash through his whole being at the thought.

No matter how human he looks, that’s the one thing that he can never do. Age. Grow. Die a real death. He knows it isn’t likely Yuuri will want to keep him around for his entire life, but even if he did, once he’s gone, there really is no one left to help him.

He’ll be alone.

“Victor?” The melody of Yuuri’s voice cuts through his inner dilemma like lightning through a still night.

He blinks himself back to the moment. Yuuri’s face is suddenly much closer than before.

“Are you okay?” The words brush like a summer breeze against his skin, something about the closeness coupled the gentleness of his tone helping push the fear away a little.

Victor quickly nods, fixing his smile back in place. “Of course. It’s just such a wonderful gift.” He isn’t technically lying. The shock of such a present is still swirling in his system rather strongly, the fact that Yuuri picked something out personally for him making a few new sensations ripple through him. “Thank you.”

“Here.” Yuuri scoots up next to him, phone camera pointing to them. He lifts his hand high to get the best angle for a selfie, but still can’t quite fit them both in the frame. “Oh hang on.” He shifts the angle of his body slightly, moving until the warmth of his forehead is pressed to Victor’s. 

Victor stays as still as he can, the place their heads are touching somehow feeling just a little too warm, a little like prolonged sun exposure.

He ignores it, smiling as widely as he can as Yuuri presses his finger against his screen a few times, hand wobbling slightly.

He pulls it back, moving his head away from Victor’s to inspect his photography skills. 

Victor resist the urge to rub the spot Yuuri has just touched, instead leaning over to take a look at the pictures, making a mental note to upload them to his backup later.

He can’t deny they’re nice images, actual sunlight giving a proper organic warmth to both their faces. For once the blue in his eyes is shining like something actually alive. Like an ocean, rather than a mix of azure acrylic paints. 

As Yuuri flicks through them, there is one thing he can’t quite figure out. He takes the phone and zooms in a little, wondering if it was the fault of the lens or the lighting.

His cheeks are definitely a little pinker then they were before.

 

***

Not even the best technology on the planet can stop the early sunsets of Autumn, the golden light of the late afternoon soon shifting to a softer orange, the lake-blue of the sky slowly dissolving into a dusky pink. The whole sky was some kind of abstract picture, like two pots of pastel paint had spilled into each other, yet blended into the perfect soft hue. It’s a far cry from the dense dark greys of evenings back in the outer city limits and yet another sight Victor knows he’s not going to forget. Even just watching the shifting fire of the sunlight brushing across his fingers is an entirely new experience. The rich colours bring a different, more pinkened glow to his skin, like he really is something alive and not just a synthetic material covering a hard metal casing. 

They’ve ended their walk on one of the highest points of the park, a man-made hill that gave a perfect view of the entire park from the peak. There were several benches scattered around, but they’d opted to sit down on the grass, the softness of the blades far better than the wooden seat in Victor’s opinion. 

Victor’s sits upright, content watching the orange cotton candy of the clouds gently laze around the sky, occasionally casting his eyes down to watch the sunset ignite all the colours of the park in warmer tones. Yuuri is lying down next to him, hands behind his head, glasses dimmed so he doesn’t hurt his eyes staring at the sky. Victor has resisted more than one urge to poke the sliver of stomach peaking out from his shirt, not entirely sure whether Yuuri would find it amusing or not.

As the minutes pass, he’s mildly surprised to see more and more people settling down around them, many discarding their shoes to press their soles into the cool grass below. He knows that the ground isn’t going to feel any different against his feet then his fingers and yet he can’t help but toe off his shoes and socks and lightly run them across the ground, more than a little pleased at the mild tickling sensation that follows.

He turns to Yuuri to suggest he does the same, when he notices how even his breathing is, the lightest snores rumbling past his lips.

He bites back the squeak at how cute he looks, but decides it’s probably not the best idea to let him sleep on the side of a hill for too long.

“Yuuri?” He gently pokes the side of his face until he blinks his eyes open, head shifting towards his touch. “Would you like to leave?”

Yuuri stifles a yawn behind his hand but sits up and straightens himself a little. “No. There’s one last thing I want to see.”

“What is it?”

“Have you looked up this park’s itinerary?” 

“No.” He flicks his browser up in front of his eyes, searching for the park’s website.  “I can if you want.” 

“Don’t,” Yuuri says gently, shifting into a more comfortable position on the grass and setting his eyes forward. “Just wait a little longer.”

He quickly shuts the website and copies Yuuri’s position, more than a little curious as to what he meant.

It doesn’t take long for the sunset to disappear completely, the rich navy of nighttime blanketing the sky above them. Victor briefly wonders why there isn’t a light system in place to cut through the darkness around them, but his thought is cut short by a loud bang.

A loud, _bright_ bang.

Almost the instant the sky had darkened, several golden fireworks had been shot up into the atmosphere above them, exploding in a bright flowery dusting of light and glitter and illuminating the shadows around them.

Victor blinks to make sure he was actually seeing things right. Staring to the patch of sky in front of them, he can stop his gasp when dozens more vivid, dazzling fireworks shoot up and burst into the sky, each sending a handfuls of colourful stars tumbling into the darkness behind them. Bursts of blues, pinks, reds and silvers light up the sky, the crowd around them clapping and cheering as the display continues, all the colours of the flowers before having nothing on the brightness in front of his eyes.

Just when he thought Yuuri didn’t have any more tricks up his sleeve.

He’d seen fireworks in pictures and videos plenty of times, but nothing could compare to experiencing them so closely. The colours flashing against the sky, the crack of the explosion reverberating against his ears, the smell of the fire and salts as they fall and whisper into the air around them.

There’s no word for them other than _gorgeous._

“Yuuri. I- I-” He swallows as he turns to him, words caught in his throat as he watches the sea of colours flash across the soft curves of Yuuri’s face. A glimmer of green from the latest firework suddenly shines in the darkness of his eyes, still rich and brilliant behind his glasses. It’s almost as mesmerising to watch as the actual show. 

He takes a breath, wondering what it was about this man that had his language centre failing so very often.

 _Maybe it’s that he really is the only person who can genuinely surprise him._   

“Thank you,” he eventually whispers in a brief lull between fireworks, hoping that the two words were enough to convey the sheer depths of his gratitude, stronger than anything he’s ever experienced before.

Something stronger than the light of any fireworks briefly flickers across Yuuri’s expression. Victor is unable to quite place what it is before Yuuri leans forward a little, perhaps to hear him better. “You’re very welcome Victor. Now come on, you don’t want to miss the big finish.”

***

When the show concludes, it takes Victor a few minutes to process everything that happened to him today. All he originally wanted was wanted was a trip somewhere that wasn’t Yuuri’s street on his place of work, and instead he got _all this._ A day that was fit for the best members of society, something Yuuri should have shared with his closest friends or family, not something like him… and yet he did. Because he _wanted_ to.

Part of him keeps trying to convince himself that it was only because he felt bad, guilty for snapping at him, but a walk around the city would have quelled that. He didn't have to do any even remotely close to this.

It doesn’t really make sense. And for once Victor doesn’t want to work it out.

Eventually he squashes the matter and turns to Yuuri, unsurprised to find him dozing against his arm, body limp and heavy.

“Yuuri?”

“Mmmm?” He doesn’t open his eyes, seemingly happy to rest his head on Victor’s arm for the foreseeable future.

Victor chuckles softly but securely wraps an arm around him to help him to his feet, slowly guiding them back down the entrance with determined strides. “Let’s go home.”

***

Yuuri passes out against Victor almost the instant they sit down in their seats on the train. Victor shifts a little to try and make himself as comfortable a pillow as possible for Yuuri, but he already seems perfectly content laying against his shoulder, lips softly parted, eyelids twitching a little behind his glasses.

Victor slowly scrolls through all the pictures he’s taken today as they wait for the train to move, though he really can’t help but wish that they’d never have to leave this carriage. Yuuri’s head on his shoulder, his hand resting so close to his own, the feeling of him completely relaxed and oblivious to the world as he sleeps is something Victor is finding himself liking more and more with each gentle breath against his skin. To many, having such a weight on them might be annoying, but Victor honestly can’t think of anything sweeter.

Objectively he knows that nothing can ever be perfect, and yet he is fairly certain that today is probably the closest to it that he’ll ever get during his period of activation.

And even considering all that, there’s definitely one thing he’s worked out today.

As the pull out of Central’s station, he doesn’t fight the urge to reach over with his free hand and lightly drag the tips of his fingers through the soft inky mess of Yuuri’s hair. That same strange warmth flickers in his chest as Yuuri moves his head into the touch, sighing gently.

_This. This is his happy place._

 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates every Tuesday!


	3. Days 59-70 With Yuuri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's in a touch?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Make sure to check out the accompanying moodboard [HERE](https://jfmesq.tumblr.com/post/186189656788/here-is-the-moodboard-for-chapter-3-of-the-fic-i) before you start reading.

**Log Date: 59 With Yuuri**

 

“Victor, I’m  _ fine _ .”

Victor has heard the statement at least ten times in the last half an hour and like all the previous protests, he ignores it. 

“No you’re not. Now keep still.”

“Yes I am, please just get off the bed.”

Victor doesn’t shift from his position, one hand firmly keeping the edge of the duvet down so Yuuri can’t slip out, the other pressed to his forehead so he can more accurately gauge his temperature.

Not that he really needs to.

He didn’t have to be an android to notice how sick Yuuri was when he’d walked in with his coffee twenty minutes earlier, even with all the lights turned off. He was wrapped up like a spring roll in his duvet, a mess of tissues scattered like rose petals across the mattress and floor, his breathing like a muffled car engine under the blankets.

Victor had ditched the coffee immediately, searching all of his symptoms in the blink of an eye. Sheet-white face, wet rattling cough, eyes puffy and red- it didn’t take long for a diagnosis of seasonal flu to be the only logical conclusion.

Even if Yuuri himself refused to believe it.

“It’s just a cold,” Yuuri grumbles, voice thick and muffled like he has cotton wool stuffed at the back of his throat. “Air will do me good.”

“Your temperature of 100.1 degrees begs to differ.” Victor pulls his palm away from his forehead, wiping the dampness on the edge of his shirt and reaching over to his nightstand.

“I’ll be fi-”

“Drink this.” A glass of water is shoved in Yuuri’s hands before he can finish. Victor sits and folds his arms, watching him with a firm expression until he drains the whole glass.

“Victor, I  _ need  _ to go to work.” His voice is pleading, the concern in his bleary eyes all too real. It does make Victor feel for him, but at the moment his health is paramount.

“I’ve already contacted your parents,” Victor continues as he grabs Yuuri’s trash can from the corner of the room and starts collected the mess of discarded tissues. “And they agree with me.”

Yuuri starts to shift out of bed, grunting when Victor is back in an instant, lightly pushing him back into the mattress. “You know they need the help.”

He does know. Every day they’re there he knows more and more how desperately the onsen could really use more staff, but every part of his programming is rigidly instructing him to make sure that Yuuri gets better.

It’s what a good companion would do.

“You know if you go, they’ll just send you home,” Victor continues cooly, handing Yuuri his tissue box as he starts to cough again, body shaking with the effort.  _ Poor thing. _ “Plus, think about the trouble everyone will be in if you accidentally infect one of the guests.”

Yuuri opens his mouth to protest but slowly shuts it, crumpling the tissues between his fingers. He sighs and settles back against his pillows, drawing the duvet up to his chin.

Victor smiles as he collects his empty glass, keeping his voice gentle. “Rest and fluids are what you need right now.” He grabs the most recently used tissues, making a mental note to thoroughly decontaminate himself when he leaves the room. “The sooner you get better, the sooner we can both go back to work.”

Yuuri’s eyes are swollen and watery behind his glasses, but Victor still sees them soften a little at his words. He rolls into his side exhaling slowly. “Okay.”

Victor reaches down to tuck the blankets more securely around him until he’s wrapped up nice and tight. He tries not to laugh at how his black duvet cover made him look like a little sushi roll. Only the top half of his face pops out of the top, the next series of coughs muted through the thick material. 

Victor lightly plucks the glasses from his face as he turns to go and get more water and refill the room’s humidifier. “You sound like you could use some decongestants. I’ll go and get some now.”

“Ugh. Fine.” His voice his barely audible through the blanket, though the annoyance in his tone still registers clearly. “Leave me alone to die.”

“So you admit you’re sick then?”

Yuuri’s face scrunches at Victor’s tease, his whole body curling in on itself until he’s nothing but a tiny lump under all the bedding. It’s an adorable picture. “Ugh. Yes. Fine.” 

Victor chuckles as he exits the room, briefly pausing in the doorway, hands on his hips. “I won’t be long. And I’ll know if you leave that bed.”

As he slides the door closed, he can just about hear Yuuri’s grumbled response. Something about him  _ not being his mother  _ and  _ he can’t stop him going out if he really wants to. _

Victor rolls his eyes as he walks over to grab his coat, refilling the glass in his hand as he goes. He’s seen just how coordinated Yuuri is right now. He isn’t worried.

After he delivers the drink, he notices that Vicchan has activated for the day and is patiently sitting in the kitchen with an insistently wagging tail.  

Victor leans down to softly scratch him around the ears, smile melting a little as he leans into the touch, grumbling softly. Sometimes it really is hard to remember that he isn’t a real dog.

As he heads for the door, the excitable poodle picks up his leash from where it’s hanging out of the umbrella stand and sits by the door with bright, expectant eyes. 

“Sorry boy,” Victor murmurs as he unhooks the leash from his mouth and grabs the keys from the bowl on the side. “No pets allowed in the store.” He bites his lip when the small dog flops to the floor, whimpering quietly. He almost changes his mind, but quickly leans down and points towards the main bedroom with a smile. “I have a job for you.” 

Vicchan sits back up, tilting his head curiously.

“Keep an eye on him for me okay?” He speaks slowly, hoping the commands register properly. Vicchan might be more intelligent than any normal dog, but he is still running on a programme that Yuuri wrote when he was twelve.

_ Still, can’t hurt to try. _

He keeps eye contact with the poodle, smiling wider when he thinks of the perfect solution. “And if he leaves his room, bark and bark and bark until he goes back.”

***

Decongestants and a fresh pack of tissues in his pocket, Victor walks slowly around the supermarket scrolling through a series of different recipes for people who were under the weather. Every credible source he’d found online had claimed that replenishing fluids was the most important thing to do for someone with the flu, but foods rich in specific vitamins were also good if they can stomach it. 

That is, if it  _ is  _ the flu.

He shakes his head at the thought, annoyed that it had cropped up more than once.

As an AI, he has the ability to avoid worrying about the small things, things he knows have the smallest chance of actually happening- and yet more than once his eye had dropped to the very bottom of every medical article where it always had some other much worse illness listed. He shuts down the train of thought each time it crops up. 

It was winter and it was flu season. Ergo, Yuuri most likely has the flu. 

He was nowhere near sick enough to have pneumonia, meningitis has been eradicated for decades at this point, and he’s fairly certain Yuuri hasn’t been anywhere near the depths of the Amazon so he definitely did not have early stages of the plague either. Absolutely no logical reason to worry.

And yet he can feel a small part of his mind still wandering back to those conditions, what they looked like, when to see a doctor, fatality rate-

He grips the basket in his hand a little harder, pulling himself back to the present as he shuts down all pages to do with anything that wasn’t the flu.

Ingredients. That’s what he needs right now. No need to be ridiculous. 

He’s lost count of the amount of times such illogical thoughts had started popping up since his activation. He still hasn’t got round to running a proper full-body diagnostic yet, despite the frequency of these glitches. He keeps pushing it back, knowing full-well it would take the best part of a day and a lot of energy. Neither him nor Yuuri had the time for that, plus it wasn’t impacting his work in any measurable way. Yuuri is still happy with him and has seen that his productivity has increased by quite a margin ever since Victor started assisting him at work. And while Yuuri was a genius when it came to androids, he still isn’t sure exactly how Victor’s programme works, so he’s doubtful he’d be able to find the problem either.

Plus Victor isn’t really sure how to articulate it properly to Yuuri, each thought so different and strange… and all pertaining to him.

He brings the page of recipes back up and casually scrolls through as he walks up and down the aisles, deciding to ignore the matter for now. He’ll get to it eventually.

Despite the rasp in his throat, Yuuri hadn’t seemed to have any trouble drinking every glass of water he gave him. Something soft was probably Victor’s best bet, as well as something that could keep in the fridge for a few days depending on how long this took to clear up. After a few more seconds of searching, he concludes that some kind of soup is probably best.

The prospect of actually making something for Yuuri is kind of exciting. He’s actually surprised he’d gone this long without cooking.

From day one with Victor, Yuuri had insisted on doing all his own cooking, claiming that robotics wasn’t the only thing he was good at. Inspecting the contents of Yuuri’s cupboards and fridge, Victor had been sceptical at his claim to say the least, not exactly sure what he could make from half a yellow onion, four eggs and some leftover potatoes

That being said, Victor was more than a little impressed when Yuuri finished patching up his head casing, wandered into the kitchen and then made a fairly decent spanish omelette while going over their living arrangements.

Cooking always seemed to be something he took a little more personally. That first night Yuuri had offhandedly mentioned that his mother taught him to cook, and that it was always fun to see the look on clients faces when they came to his old apartment in Central for dinner and found out that he made their meal rather than some hired help.

Victor can understand that, but cooking is still something he’s always wanted to try. He already has knife skills downloaded and didn’t exactly have to worry about burns or cuts. As a companion, it’s a job he kind of expected to be doing from day one, so he’s happy that he’s finally able to put some of those skills to use.

Plus it should make Yuuri happy.

The last thought is the main one he holds onto. Seeing him so grumpy and miserable earlier made him a little sad as more than just his android. Yuuri had gone on more than once about how Victor “should be his own person,” so something about the term  _ companion  _ just didn’t seem to fit their relationship quite right anymore. 

It’s the role burned into his programme, something as stark and obvious in his mind as the colour of the sky and the fact that the globe was round. It’s what he knows he should refer to himself as, and yet right now he can’t help but see himself as something a little more than just a tool, or an object for Yuuri’s convenience.

While he’ll never admit it out loud, deep down he knows that he much prefers the term  _ friend. _

He smiles a little as the word. It makes him feels a little warmer thinking about it.

As he walks, he suddenly pauses on one of the websites, one recipe seeming to contain everything he was looking for. He’s fairly certain Yuuri already has some of the ingredients back at the apartment and they were always on a pretty tight budget when spending any money. 

“Miso soup,” he murmurs to himself as he walks back down the aisle drawing up a shopping list. “That sounds good.” 

Back at Yuuri’s place, it doesn’t take too long to prepare.

As he walks around the kitchen, he’s happy to see that Yuuri doesn’t seem to have left his bedroom, Vicchan sitting patiently outside the door with determination in his eyes. More than ever Victor wishes he was real so he could give him a treat for being such a good boy. As is, he pets him around the ears, promising to take him on a walk later.

As the main body of the soup simmers quietly on the stove, he gets to work chopping asparagus, checking off the steps on the recipe as he goes. The steam from the soup is already starting to fill the room, blurring up the windows with a warm fog. He can’t resist reaching over to draw a little smiley face on the pane, chuckling when it almost immediately disappears with another breath from the boiling pan.

He opens the window when he finishes, ladelling some into a small bowl. He’s pleased that it looks almost identical to the picture from the recipe.

He just hopes Yuuri likes it. 

He doesn’t know why he’s nervous about that as he slowly approaches Yuuri’s room, soup in one hand, spoon in the other. He was acutely aware of all Yuuri’s dislikes and allergies, none of them found in this soup. 

Victor draws the conclusion that it’s because it’s his first time cooking for him and that he wants so desperately to impress him. 

Plus it would be nice to make things for Yuuri more often. It might even take a little more of the stress off of his shoulders that Victor can almost see digging in like iron claws.

Opening the door, he’s happy to see Yuuri still bundled up in his blankets, eyes barely open. His glasses are back on, the monitor installed at the foot of his bed flickering softly with some daytime programme Victor doesn’t recognise.

“How are you feeling?” He asks gently as he approaches the side of the bed before carefully sitting down.

Yuuri scrunches up his face. “Like God is punishing me for some heinous crime.” He grabs a tissue from the bedside table and releases several loud, hacking coughs into the paper as if to articulate his point.

Victor feels for him.

“Here,” he says as kindly as he can, passing him the bowl. “Eat this, you’ll feel better.”

Yuuri wriggles his torso free form the duvet, eyeing the contents curiously. “You made me soup?”

“Well that’s what you’re supposed to do when someone is sick right?”

Yuuri blinks a few times as if to try and register exactly what’s in front of him. “Wow Victor. That’s so sweet of you.”

“Anything to make you feel better.”

Yuuri gives a pale smile at the words before taking a long sip of the soup.

Victor sees his expression change instantly.

His eyes crinkle a little more, face softly contorting with something that almost looks like pain as his mouth sets in a thin line. He swallows rapidly, quickly resting the spoon back against the lip of the bowl.

“Mmmm that’s. Definitely… something.”

Victor bites his lip. “You don’t like it.”

“Of- of course I do.”

Victor folds his arms, trying to ignore the flare of disappointment pulsing in his mind at Yuuri’s clear disgust. “You’re lying.”

“No I’m not.”

“Then eat the rest of it.”

Yuuri lifts the spoon to his lips with a shaky hand. He holds it there for a few seconds, something flickering across his expression as if contemplating how bad it would be to eat it to spare Victor’s feelings. He keeps the charade up for a little longer before he eventually breaks, putting it back in the bowl. “Okay fine, I was.”

Victor tries not to let the annoyance show on his face as he takes the bowl from Yuuri’s hands, passing him a glass of water in return. “What’s wrong with it?”

Yuuri takes a few long gulps, rinsing the water around his mouth before swallowing. “Did you follow the recipe?”

“Of course. I know how to read.”

“Then why does it taste so… off?”

“It does?” Victor lifts the bowl to his nose. He can clearly pick out each individual ingredient amongst the heat and steam, but nothing that wasn’t in the recipe. He analyses the air a little more, trying to pinpoint what it could be.

“What’s in it exactly?” Yuuri asks after a minute.

“Mirin, red miso paste, instant dashi, tofu-”

“Was it the tofu in the fridge?”

“Yes?”

Yuuri lets out another sigh, taking the bowl from Victor’s hands and putting it on the nightstand. “Victor that’s been in there for months.”

_ Ah. _

“Oh. Really?” His brows furrow a little in confusion. 

How could he have not noticed? True he couldn’t really smell if it had gone bad, but surely he should have remembered seeing it in there for weeks on end and made a note to buy more weeks ago. Why hadn’t he-

“I thought you kept on top of all my groceries?” Yuuri chimes in, voice just as confused as Victor feels right now.

“I do.”

Yuuri raises an eyebrow. “It sounds like you forgot.”

“I don’t forget things.” The words are instant. He’s an AI, he had more memory than he knows what to do with, can recall every conversation that him and Yuuri have ever had since the minute he opened his eyes. He doesn’t have the capacity to forget. It’s hardwired in.

He feels his eyes widen when he realises that he hadn’t checked any of the status of any of Yuuri’s food in weeks. He also hasn’t updated Yuuri’s calendar in a fortnight, nor scheduled Vicchan for his bi-monthly repair. 

He brings a hand to his forehead, running through his memory as fast as he can. All the important things were there, all the records he needed to keep Yuuri safe and happy and yet… things are missing. Flicking through the last couple of weeks his notices whole hours of conversations not there, like they’d been systematically deleted over night. 

He feels a new sort of panic starting to storm in his mind.

_ Is his mind degrading?  _

No. Like so many thoughts he’s had recently, he shuts it down immediately. None of those memories were any of use anyway. All important conversations were there, all significant events and dates permanently backed up. If anything, it just looks like everything that’s gone were meaningless interactions and long stretches of him cleaning or sitting in silence.

Almost like a human’s short-term memory.

His mind pauses on the thought. He doesn’t have a short-term memory… or  a long term memory. Just the one that was  _ supposed  _ to record everything. Why was it acting up now? 

He definitely isn’t doing it on purpose, so is it unconscious? Does he even have a conscious? Why now? Why-

“Victor?” Yuuri’s voice pulls Victor from his spiralling train of thought, a warm hand on his leg. Looking up, there are small lines of concern wrinkling across his damp forehead, his reddened eyes open and genuine behind his glasses. “It’s fine really. It was sweet of you to make this for me,” he whispers, the gentlest smile on his lips.

Despite the confusion in his mind, something about Yuuri’s expression has Victor returning the grin, his worry subsiding a little. It’s not the first time just the sound of his voice has been able to do that. 

“I’m still sorry,” Victor says softly, feeling the lingering embarrassment pinch his smile a little. “I just wanted to help you feel better.”

Yuuri’s expression doesn’t change as he shakes his head a little, the whisper of a chuckle breezing past his lips. “Didn’t you taste it?”

“I can’t.”

“What?”

Victor points to his mouth, shrugging. “I can’t taste.”

“Oh. Right of course.” Yuuri settles back down against his pillows. “Sorry, sometimes it’s hard to remember that you’re bound by the limits of a machine.”

Victor feels his smile tighten at the words. “Wouldn’t be much point spending millions of dollars on research just to make a robot know what the difference between sweet and salt is,” he murmurs, grabbing the bowl so he can throw the whole lot in the trash.

He hadn’t meant for the words to come out as sharp as they did. Nothing he’d said wasn’t true. There was no logical reason for him to be able to taste, no point in feeling bad… and yet that wasn’t stopping him. 

He looks down at the soup slowly shifting in the bowl. He can feel its heat, it’s texture, could analyse what was in it down to the molecular level, but he’d never actually know himself whether it tastes good or not. 

Was it really so illogical to want to know what a piece of candy might taste like, the real difference between still and sparkling water, or if the soup he’d made for the person he’s supposed to be looking after was actually edible or not?

He decides to stop thinking about it, softening his expression again. He doesn’t need to make Yuuri feel any worse than he already does by acting so stupidly.

“I mean I guess that makes sense,” Yuuri hums flicking his eyes down to the tablet now resting in his lap. “Although…” He trails off  as he starts typing something, that telltale little wrinkle back between his brows as he gets on with whatever he’s doing. After a few seconds, he looks back up to Victor, a little brightness finally starting to glow behind the chilled white of his expression. “Look I appreciate the effort. Really thank you.”

He scoots a little closer to Victor as he says it, the genuine appreciation in his tone clear.

Victor feels a little better at that. At least he’d managed to make him laugh, and apparently give him something else to think about.

_ Not a total failure then. _

Victor reaches over to grab some more tissues scattered around Yuuri’s bed and to pass the decongestants still in his pocket. “It’s fine. I’ll get some soup delivered.”

Yuuri leans over to lightly brush Victor’s arm in thanks. “I’d like that.”

The touch from his fingers may be a little clammy, but Victor feels the warmth right down to his circuits. 

And just like that, all his worries are gone again.   
  


***

**Log Date: Day 62 With Yuuri**

 

After three days of whining and begging, Victor is finally satisfied enough with Yuuri’s colour and temperature to let him go back to work.

He watches him with a keen eye as he dresses and makes breakfast, looking for any hints that he isn’t ready and that he needs one more day in bed. He makes sure to find the thickest knit-jumper that Yuuri has, testing each garment he has for durability and how well they keep their heat. Yuuri rolls his eyes as he does this with every shirt in his wardrobe but doesn’t complain, probably happy to finally be able to leave the apartment. 

He does air a mild grievance when he starts doing the same thing with all of his socks as well.

Only when Victor is finally satisfied that Yuuri is  _ properly  _ dressed for the cold weather, they set off. He wants to be mad that the instant they set foot inside the onsen, Yuuri sheds almost all of it and shoves it into the nearest cupboard with a defiant slam, but something about seeing this marshmallow of a man struggle to get out of the five layers that Victor insisted he wear is far too amusing to bother him.

After a brief whispered argument, Yuuri at least agrees to keep his mask on while working, the threat of accidentally infecting one of the customers too much of a worry for him to hand wave away.

Victor tries to keep his nose out of it after that. Yuuri is clearly well enough to do his job and Victor is also perfectly aware how many things were going to get thrown at him if he made him stay in bed another day. Despite that, he can’t help short bursts of worry that register in his system throughout the day as he helps him work. He can clearly see that his movements are still sluggish, his complexion paling a little, and that he’s taking longer periods of rest between his activities. 

Victor wants to bring it up, but also knows he’ll have to find a new way to approach the subject. He’s sure he’s said the phrase “you’re still sick,” at least twenty times over the past few hours and it had always gotten the same frustrated respons about he’s  _ perfectly fine  _ and  _ isn’t going to get better just lying around in bed all day. _

Victor sighs as he watches Yuuri pull up his mask to catch the next round of coughs in a clean tissue before slumping down in a chair, eyes heavy.

Yuuri really is the most dedicated man Victor has ever seen, to the point where it’s like his health didn’t even matter. He idly wonders if he was like this when he was still working for G-Corp and if some kind of stress-induced breakdown or other ailment was the reason he left.

He decides not to press the matter, instead waiting until they’ve finished their work to approach him about taking a break.

“You know, people tend to heal faster when they’re relaxed,” he comments as he watches Yuuri shift uncomfortably on his knees as he checks one of the floor droids in the banquet room for any new nicks or dents.

He hears Yuuri sigh behind his mask, not bothering to look up as he starts buffing a new scratch with a cloth. “I’m fine Victor, we’ve been over this.”

“Yuuri.” Victor crouches down next to him and softly takes the cloth from his hand, sending the droid on its way. “You’re finished for the day, you can be honest now.”

Yuuri shakes his head gently before turning to Victor, keeping his voice low. “I know you’re just worried, but I’m really fine.”

Victor raises an eyebrow. Before Yuuri can move, Victor has his phone out of his pocket and has snapped a picture of him and turned it for him to see.

Yuuri’s eyes widen a little at the picture of the gaunt-looking figure staring back at him, eyes dull and shadowy above the mask.

“I didn’t look like that when we left home,” he murmurs as he inspects the photo a little closer, grimacing as he zooms in.

“Yes but you’ve barely had a minute to take a real break today,” Victor answers as he takes the phone back, making sure to delete the picture. “The body needs proper time to heal.”

Yuuri pulls the mask down to his chin, his lips pulled into a defeated smile. “Okay, maybe I am still a little under the weather.”

“You know, one of the aspects advertised here is that the water is good for both relaxing and improving health.” Victor casually gestures down the hall to the baths, keeping his tone as casual as he can. “I think a soak would do you good.”

He had already done a little research into the restorative properties of the onsen, wondering if there was any angle they could use to advertise it as a medical facility as well. From his preliminary findings, it seems that the water itself doesn’t have any kind of medicinal properties, but rest and relaxation can do wonders for a variety of ailments, especially stress related ones.

Yuuri takes a second to consider his words before pulling his mask back up and shrugging. “You know, you might be right.”

Victor’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. That was definitely not the reaction he was expecting, convinced he’d have to argue his case for at least another five minutes before Yuuri finally gave in just to make him be quiet. That’s usually how it goes anyway. 

He chuckles as he stands, holding out his hand for Yuuri. “Well that’s possibly the first time you’ve said that.” 

“Don’t get used to it,” he murmurs as Victor pulls him up before heading down the corridor towards the baths. “I won’t be long. It’ll just be a quick dip.”

“I’ll be right here,” he calls after him, smiling as he watches him round the corner.

He thinks about running through Yuuri’s tasks again, just to make sure he hasn’t made any mistakes while in a flu-y haze, when he notices Mari walking around the same corner, a bottle and a few glasses in hand. He waves her over, hoping they could have a chat.

They’d only spoken on and off ever since he’d arrived and her initial suspicion of him seems to have mostly melted away, leading to some pretty amiable conversations. She had more than one anecdote about Yuuri as a child, and Victor was always eager to hear more. Every made him feel just that little bit closer to Yuuri, and it was fun to  picture him so young and carefree, surrounded by a family who supported him through his career. 

It sometimes made him wonder what it would have been like if he had a family of his own, people to love and talk to and be proud of him.

They were silly thoughts for an android to have, but it wasn’t like those were the only ones cropping up recently.

“You know, he’s looking so much better,” Mari comments as she sits down at a table beside him, gesturing for Victor to join her. 

“Good,” he says brightly as he kneels. “I made sure he got plenty of rest.”

“I’m glad,” she says before opening the sake bottle in front of her, sliding a glass towards Victor. “If you weren’t there I’m sure he would have turned up here three days ago looking half dead.”

Victor laughs, thinking of all the various excuses Yuuri had given to try and leave the apartment over the past few days. “Probably.”

He holds up his hand as she goes to pour for him first. “Sorry, I don’t drink,” he murmurs hastily as she raises an eyebrow, not entirely sure what any kind of alcohol would do to his system if any got inside. 

She eyes him for another few seconds before shrugging and pouring her own glass. “Yuuri hasn’t used the onsen in a while, did you convince him to do that?”

“It didn’t take much convincing, so I don’t want to get too much credit.” He thinks of Yuuri’s hollowed yes, the colour of his skin, the rasp to his voice. He wishes he could say that all of it was due to the flu, but he’d read enough articles on burnout to know what it is when he sees it. It’s more than a little painful to witness, especially on someone as kind as Yuuri. “I think he just needs to relax,” Victor sighs, leaning back a little and running through all the ways he’d thought of helping his loosen up a little. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Mari murmurs as she takes a long drink, almost draining the entire glass. Her eyes stay focussed on the smudged rim of the cup for a few moments, before they snap back up to Victor.  “Why don’t you join Yuuri? You haven’t tried the water yet have you?”

Victor’s processor freezes for a second at the thought.

Him. In the bath. With Yuuri.

Part of him is already yelling that it would be entirely inappropriate, that he has no reason to join him and that all the other man needed was to relax. Victor talking to him incessantly isn’t going to help with that. 

However, a much  _ much  _ louder train of thought is making itself heard. It’s simple and short, but beats down any other commands in his programming with just how  _ nice  _ it sounds. 

_ I’d get to take a bath with Yuuri. _

He knows that there wouldn’t be anything remotely sexual or romantic about being in the onsen together, and yet something about the notion of getting to sit near a completely relaxed and very naked Yuuri was making a strange, yet familiar warmth spread under his skin. 

“No, I haven’t tried it yet,” Victor eventually manages to reply, quickly getting rid of all the images his mind had just conjured up.

Those definitely were inappropriate.

“He’ll appreciate the company trust me.” Mari points down the hall before pulling off her headband so her hair falls in a tangle of dark and blonde curls across her face. The mess of her cut is strangely endearing, Victor forever surprised how similar the two Katsuki siblings really are.

He thanks Mari quietly as he stands and makes his way towards the bath, trying not to wonder how much and how often she drank after work. He knows they’re all stressed and all he wants to do is help, but right now he has another opportunity to try something new and he isn't going to waste it.

He’ll get back to his plan to save the onsen later.

He’s happy to see that the locker room is deserted when he enters. As a robot, he has absolutely no qualms about his naked body, more than aware that it fit in perfectly with other men of his perceived age and yet he still feels a little bit uneasy. As he takes off his shirt, he quickly realises that this is the first time he’ll be fully naked in quite a while. As a machine, he didn’t produce any bodily fluids so never really found much of a need to change his clothes. Yuuri had insisted he at least switch shirts every day to ward off any suspicion, but he’s pretty sure that he’s only ever changed his underwear twice. 

As he folds his clothes and puts them away, he suddenly notices the full-length mirror standing in the corner. Glancing around the room to make sure it was still empty, he quietly walks up to it. Staring his reflection in the eye, he removes the towel from around his waist before slowly and methodically moves his eyes up and down his body. 

It’s the first time in a while he’s take the time to actually  _ look  _ at himself. While he’d already analysed his some of his features to try and find some small clue of where he might have originally come from, he’s not sure he’s actually taken the time to actually take in what other people saw. What kind of man they perceived him to be.

He’s perfectly aware that he was at least modelled to be attractive to most human standards. From the sharp cut of his jaw, to the strong definition around his abdominal muscles, to the perfect shade of pink artfully painted into his lips, there’s nothing about him that isn’t pleasant to look at. But he also knows that it’s more than just someone’s looks that makes them beautiful. The heart and personality play just as important a role… and technically speaking, he didn’t have either of those.

Victor knows he has quirks. From the way he acts to the way he speaks, there was definitely a semblance of personality there, but none of them were his own choices. They were words and mannerisms meticulously calculated and designed before being plugged into the cold metal of his mind, perfectly prepared to make him the machine that he is. Nothing about him could be unpredictable, could ever be anything outside of the scientific parameters that made up his very existence.

He leans in as closely as he can, until the tip of his nose is just a breath from the cool surface of the mirror. He can look as hard as he can into the shifting black of his pupils and sees no trace of machinery, nothing to indicate his real self. His eyes look so similar to a human’s, so why should any of it matter?

He touches his finger to the glass, sighing out on a long exhale as he tries to calm the thought starting to bubble in his mind.

It’s not the first time he’s considered what it really means to be human. 

For the first few weeks of his activation, he was perfectly content with who he is, with  _ what  _ he is, and yet with each passing day there was something inside him growing more restless, something getting louder and louder every time he looked at himself in the mirror. 

Every time Yuuri was kind to him.

He pulls back from the warming glass and looks at himself again.

_ What does Yuuri see when he looks at him? _

Someone beautiful? Someone caring? Someone he wants in his life?

Or nothing but an android wrapped in a slightly more convincing human wrapper.

Something tightens in his chest as he considers the possibilities. He has so much data to work with, and yet so many of Yuuri’s personal feelings are still a mystery, his inner thoughts something Victor is becoming increasingly certain that he’ll never be able to predict. 

He knows that Yuuri is kind, that he’s  loving, that Yuuri is someone who treats him like a real person... But also that he is the one human who really knows what he is, had already put his hands inside the cold metal casing of Victor’s head.

He slowly lifts his hands to his face, watching how his skin pinkens when he pinches at his cheeks. 

It’s the perfect forgery. There’s no blood rushing to his skin, no organic reaction to his touch, just what his programming was told to do to trick the crowds. How to fool people into thinking he was something he’s not.

Something alive.

He smacks the wall next to the mirror at the thought, shaking his head until he can almost feel the circuits shaking.

That doesn’t matter. None of those thoughts mattered. All that matters is doing all he can to be useful to Yuuri who right now was tired and still fighting off an illness. 

No time for any of this.

Victor’s thoughts soften a little as he thinks of him, about everything he said to him, how he’s been treating him ever since he first activated him. Yuuri had always been kind, even when he had no reason to be. Victor had become bound to him the minute he’d spoken the activation sequence, there was no need to talk to him to gently, to laugh with him, work with him, take him on day trips just because he felt like it.

He smiles a little as he ties a robe loosely around his waist and heads out towards the baths.

Yuuri had never cared that he was a machine, in fact he’d gone out of his way to tell him to aspire to be more than his directive, to break through what was so rigidly programmed in,  _ to be his own person. _ Those words had felt like they’s been soldered into the front of his mind ever since Yuuri spoke them, not sure if there’s another man alive who would say such things to him.

Such a command was an idiotic thing to say to a machine, and yet Victor could feel how much he meant it when the words left his mouth, how much Yuuri wanted him to try.

_ And by God is he going to try _ .

Most of the pools are empty as Victor casually strolls past the indoor baths. Those soaking themselves take little notice of him as he walks through, scanning the rooms for Yuuri. He’s never actually been near any of the pools before, neither his nor Yuuri’s work needing it. 

Not to mention Yuuri’s persistent fear that the water could somehow damage him. 

Casually looking around the room, Victor can appreciate that it’s a very appealing set up. There are baths of all sizes around him, all sunken into the smoothed stone floor. The windows are high, the tiles cool, the lighting from dozens of artificial lanterns casting a soft brightness across the water making each greened ripple shine. 

It’s when Victor finally ventures outside that he spots him.

It’s quieter out here. There are a few more private baths, all erected in wood or built into sunken springs in the ground. Artificial plants tower metres above him, casting long shifting shadows as they sway in the gentle winter wind. The steam is more prominent in the chilled air, the breaths of warmth a pleasant sensation against the skin peeking through his robe.

Yuuri sits alone in a bath towards the back of the property. His eyes are closed, breathing soft, head resting against the edge of the pool. His skin is glistening and pink from the heat, the normally messy crop of hair on his head pulled back and dampened to keep from springing back.

He feels the tightness in his chest unwind at the sight of him, the vision so soft and serene it’s possibly the sweetest sight Victor as ever seen.

He makes a mental note to tell Yuuri to style his hair away from his face more often. It’s a good look for him.

Every step he takes forward banishes his earlier doubts a little more, a stronger thought taking hold.

Regardless of what he is or where he really came from, he’ll thank his lucky stars everyday that Yuuri found him. 

_ And that Yuuri wants him to stay. _

The sound of his footsteps apparently carried through the still air, Yuuri’s eyes opening a little as Victor approaches the edge of the bath.

They widen significantly when he notices who it is.

“Victor? What are you doing here?” 

“I would have thought that’s obvious,” he gestures to the loose fitting robe he’s currently untying as he continues to step forward. “I’ve wanted to try the onsen ever since I first saw it.” He punctuates the final word by dropping the material to the floor, gently resting his hands on his hips as he slips a foot into the water in front of him.

He swears the red diffusing across Yuuri’s cheeks isn’t just from the heat of the bath.

“Is it- are you going to be alright?” He murmurs as Victor submerges himself to his waist and walks over to sit next to him. “I haven’t had the chance to see how prolonged exposure to hot water will affect you.”

“I can survive all conditions a human body can, so I’ll be fine,” he replies softly, slowly spreading his arms against the smooth stone behind him so he can lean back more easily. “And  _ yes,  _ I am definitely waterproof.” He doesn’t elaborate on how he’d spent twenty minutes standing under Yuuri’s shower a few weeks ago just to check.

Yuuri takes a few seconds to look up and down Victor’s submerged form before the little pinched lines of worry on his forehead smooth. “Okay, I guess this is fine then.”

He goes back to his previous position, body pliant against the wall behind them, eyes closed. Victor takes a few more moments to enjoy the sight of Yuuri so relaxed for once before closing his own eyes, concentrating on the sensation of the water lightly rippling against his torso. It’s a surprisingly pleasing feeling.

As an android, his body doesn’t benefit from relaxing, his joints actually requiring regular movement and care to keep functioning their best, but he can still appreciate the feeling of the iced air blowing past his ears, yet every one of his units still staying warm thanks to the heated water from the pool. His mind is also programmed to constantly be active, but having the option the willingly let it be blank, to let his brain calm and wander is an experience he’s also quickly learning to enjoy. Random thoughts pop up and die just as quickly as the fireworks they saw those weeks ago, incoherent shapes and colours blooming and swirl behind his eyelids with no real rhyme or reason. It’s oddly satisfying to watch

For once, he’s happy to be doing nothing, and glad he’s doing it with Yuuri.

“Mmmm this  _ is  _ nice,” he mumbles as he sinks in a little further, letting the soft caress of the water slip up over his shoulders, the metal under his skin pleasantly warming at the action.

“Yeah. I haven’t had the chance to actually use them in so long.” Yuuri’s voice is a gentle murmur next to him, his words melting like the frost on the stones around them. “I don’t care what the other places around here say,  _ nothing  _ can beat this.”

“Maybe if we get some testimonials, it could help find new customers.”

“Maybe.”

“I actually did have some thoughts.” Victor opens his eyes, turning towards Yuuri a little. “Your website is good, but I had a quick look at your competitors and I really think that it would benefit from-”

“Victor.” Yuuri’s voice is still as mellow as ever as he interrupts.

“Yes?”

He opens one eye slowly. “I love your enthusiasm, but for  _ once  _ I’d really like to not talk about work.”

“Katsuki Yuuri!” Victor brings a hand to his cheek in a teasingly surprised gesture. “Never in my life did I expect you to say something like that.”

“What can I say?” Yuuri shrugs, slipping a little further into the water. “This is a stress-free zone.”

Victor chuckles at the words, slowly stretching out his legs against the worn bottom of the bath. He can feel each individual bump and scratch of stone against his toes as he moves, his skin somehow more pliant and sensitive from the heat. He wants to wonder why, but something about the atmosphere around him is whispering every small nagging thought away, like there’s nothing else that matters in these few warmed minutes besides the water around him and the man sitting next to him. 

Maybe the steam really is getting to his processor?

“I guess you were pretty lucky getting to soak in these growing up,” he comments lightly, letting his fingers skim over the silvery surface of the pool. 

“Yeah.” Yuuri’s voice is as easy as the water slowly rolling across his shoulders. “It’s a miracle they’re still here. I’ve used many others during my travels for work and stuff but these are definitely the best.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah.” Yuuri sits up a little, shifting his head and smiling as he catches Victor’s eye again. “For one of my first overseas presentations I had to go to Iceland. Reykjavík has a lot of wonderfully preserved natural hot springs. I tried some in actual resorts, but the nicest one was definitely the steam valley.”

“Reykjadalur?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. It was so nice.” Yuuri shuts his eyes again as he shifts over onto his front, resting his head on his arms laying against the stone lip of the spring. “But somehow they still weren’t as good as this.”

Victor does a quick image search of the name. He was made vaguely aware of it when researching other hot springs a while back, but he’d never had the chance to look in much detail. He’s surprised by how relatively natural they still seem to be. Long winding rivers of crystal blue cutting through lush green valleys, not a piece of technology to be seen around the people soaking, casually leaning on deep dark natural rock formations erupting from the shallow water.

“Wow. It looks beautiful,” he says quietly as he scrolls through each picture, wondering if the water felt the same as it did here, if the grass was softer than the blades growing in the Central District’s parks. “Did you pick up any Icelandic while you were there?”

“Of course.”

“Vernig hefur þú það?” Victor asks, smoothly calling his bluff.

Yuuri laughs and rolls his eyes. “Okay. Maybe I lied. But do you actually speak Icelandic?”

“Yes,” he quickly taps the side of his head, smirking. “I have 101 different languages and dialects programmed in here.”

“God, we  _ really  _ need to find whoever created you.”

“And then what?”

“Hmmm?”

Victor bites his lip, trying to keep his words level as he answers. “If we find them. What do we do?” He hadn’t really meant to ask, but it is a question that had been very present in his mind ever since Yuuri had first mentioned it.

Yuuri shrugs, turning his cheek to look at Victor properly. “Well I have more than a few questions about  _ how  _ exactly they created you.”

He keeps his eyes locked with Yuuri’s, trying to speak as calmly as he can. “What if they’re the one who left me broken in an alley?” He knows it’s not a pleasant thought, but it is a shockingly plausible one. There he was, a walking, talking piece of illegal technology that had the ability to put its creator in jail just by its mere existence. The concept that whoever made him got in too deep and wanted to get rid of the evidence is one of the more obvious scenarios that he’s run.

And the only one that did make his body lock up a little whenever he thought about it.

“Victor.” Yuuri exhales slowly before he continues, the subject clearly something that was making him uncomfortable to think about as well. “I think we should cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Victor nods as he slowly sinks a little further into the water. The pool suddenly feels just a little too hot to be wholly pleasant. 

He knows there’s no point in worrying about it  _ now,  _ but he also knows that finding his original creator is where they’re both heading. Whether it takes another month or ten years, he is very aware that the growing worry about what exactly that would mean for him and his existence probably isn’t going to go away.

“Hey.” Yuuri’s hand is suddenly against his arm, his voice as soft as the water around them. “I’m not going to let them hurt you.” He’s shifted away from leaning against the edge of the spring, now perched next to Victor with gentle, open eyes. “Not again.” His fingers tighten against Victor’s skin as he speaks, the conviction behind his words clear.

The effect of his words are immediate.

Just like every time before, the notion that Yuuri is definitely here for him has those stupid fears easing away, like a breeze blowing smoke from a campfire.

Victor lifts a hand from the bottom of the pool and wraps his fingers around Yuuri’s, squeezing gently. “Thank you Yuuri.” He isn’t sure what it is about him, whether it’s the fact he’s the only person that Victor has had any prolonged exposure to, or that with every passing day he only seems to become more fascinating to Victor, but there’s definitely  _ something  _ about Yuuri that just makes him feel so… comfortable.

It’s as Yuuri’s fingers linger a little longer against his own that he realises. True, it’s a conclusion that Victor has come to a long time ago, but now he can feel it pulsing through his system stronger than ever.

He’s happy.

Their conversation eases after that. The volume of their words drop until they’re as soft as the steam around them, each sentence slowing until they’re soaking in a long comfortable silence. Yuuri doesn’t move from his close proximity to Victor, gently moving his fingers across the water until all his movements halt, his posture slackening. It doesn’t take long until he’s almost completely slumped over, his head resting against Victor’s bare shoulder.

Victor can’t deny that the feeling of his bare skin ever so close to his own is a strangely good one. He tries to sit in the most comfortable position that he can as so not to disturb him, but any small movement has Yuuri shifting, body dropping further and further into the water. Eventually Yuuri’s slips a little more than Victor is comfortable with and his hand is instinctively against his waist, pulling him closer until he’s effectively cradling him against his chest.

Victor tells himself that he’s doing it so Yuuri doesn’t fall, that’s there’s absolutely no ulterior motive and that there isn’t a way there could be one. He keeps telling himself that as he lets the thumb of his free hand slowly trace the dark curve of Yuuri’s eyebrow and down the soft peach of his cheek, exploring with the lightest of touches. His skin is pliant and pink against his own, the softness of his face more pleasant than the softest down against Victor’s forefinger. He doesn’t stop himself as he strokes across to the round cut of his jaw, to the slow beat of his pulse fluttering in his neck and then down to the warm weight of his chin. He pauses there, feeling the shape of it between his fingers before he lifts it a little, just enough so the gentle curve of his mouth moves dangerously close to his own. He takes a second to map every detail he can, the dark spread of each individual eyelash, the almost invisible paint-smattering of freckles blooming across the bridge of his nose, the gentle curve of his lips, parted ever so slightly as he continues to doze, exhaling soft and sweet every few seconds.

The sudden feel of his breath washing so prominently against Victor’s lips has several different alarms shrieking in his head, his curious hand immediately dropping back into the water with a definite splash.

He keeps his arm wrapped around Yuuri but he sets his head forward, everything he’d just done playing out shamefully in his mind.

What was he even thinking? This isn’t the time for this. There will never be a time for this. What he was doing was so against protocol he should shut himself down for a week for even thinking about touching Yuuri like that.

Yuuri doesn’t flinch at the movements, his body still a deadweight against Victor’s side.

As Victor tries to calm himself, he thanks whatever luck was still on his side that Yuuri hadn’t noticed. He doesn’t even want to imagine what he would have said if he’d woken and seen his android doing things like that while he slept.

Quickly turning back to Yuuri, he almost feels a little relieved that he still looks so peaceful by his side, like there isn’t a care in the world passing through his mind as he dozes on.

Shifting against the bottom of the pool, he notices Yuuri’s fingers resting closely to his own, now swollen and wrinkled from soaking so long. He chuckles as he compares them to the smooth surface of his own, deciding that it was probably time for both of them to get out.

“Yuuri?” He lightly brushes the damp end of his hair across his forehead as he speaks, trying not to jerk him to consciousness too abruptly, “are you awake?”

Yuuri shifts against him ever so slightly, eyelids briefly twitching as his head moves against him. “Mmmmm.”

Victor steadies himself, all words briefly escaping him at the feeling of Yuuri’s bottom lip brushing the skin above his collarbone. “We should get out.”

Yuuri doesn’t move, the sound coming from his lips barely audible even to Victor. “No.”

Victor sighs and wraps his arms around his torso a little more securely, pulling them both from the water. “Come on.” He keeps his eyes trained forward as he quickly scans the surrounding area for the towels discarded around the edge of the pool. 

Eventually, he manages to pull Yuuri out and help him rinse off before they’re both dressing and heading out back into the main complex of the inn. Yuuri is basically sleepwalking at this point, but mumbles something about forgetting his tool belt upstairs before slowly shuffling up to get it.

Victor smiles a little at the sight. 

“Wow he looks beat.”

He turns to see Mari now standing next to him, the same bottle from earlier resting against her hip. It’s a lot emptier and her cheeks much rosier. He decides not to mention it, keeping his expression gentle. “He’s exhausted. I’m going to take him home.”

She sighs and shakes her head as her eyes follow where Yuuri went. “He works himself so hard.”

Victor smiles at the soft adoration in her tone, a similar one colouring his voice as he answers. “He really does.”

They stand in silence for a minute, Victor idly wondering if Yuuri had fallen asleep somewhere. He thinks about going to look for him before Mari’s voice cuts through the quiet.

“Does- does he ever talk about returning to robotics?” Her smile looks a little forced as she speaks, something akin to genuine worry suddenly creasing in the lines around her eyes. “Sorry if it’s a personal question, it’s just sometimes we can't help but wonder if his talent is being wasted here.” She lightly picks at the label on the edge of the bottle as she speaks, gaze dropping. “I just want him to be happy.”

The small frustration in her tone is something Victor is all too familiar with. He’s more than aware of all Yuuri’s accomplishments, but he’s also seen first-hand just how amazing he is when it comes to machinery. The care he takes with Vicchan, how he can navigate Victor’s inner workings despite having no idea about where he came from, or the way his eyes brighten like a sunrise whenever he looks at some piece of old discarded tech. Victor can see it every day. Engineering isn’t just a talent, it’s part of him and Victor likes to think that it isn’t just because he’s a robot that he doesn’t want to see Yuuri throw it all away. 

He can’t even imagine what it’s like for his family. These are the people who saw him cultivate such a reputation and then walk away like it was nothing. And clearly they don’t know what to do about the whole situation either. 

“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” Victor murmurs, quickly checking no one else is in earshot. “I’ve tried to get him to talk to me about his past job and his future but, it just seems to make him really uncomfortable.”

Mari nods slowly, meeting his eyes again. “That makes sense.”

“Do you know why he left?”

She takes a few seconds to answer, picking at the label a little more thoroughly as a thousand thoughts seem to run through her head. “Yes,” she eventually answers, holding up a hand when Victor opens his mouth, “and I know you’re probably very curious but I can’t tell you, I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

Her smile is sympathetic as she turns back to the stairs. “It was such a hard choice for him and it really isn’t my place to comment.”

“I can imagine.” Victor knows he has the power to calculate almost any possibility, find out anything he wants if he tries hard enough, so the fact he can’t even fathom a ghost of an idea as to why Yuuri left has been frustrating him on so many different levels. There was no public record of what happened, Yuuri himself had made no statement, and despite the news having a brief interest in why one of the greatest technological minds of the generation had suddenly disappeared, it had soon moved on to the next up and coming developers. 

Victor feels his jaw set in a harder line. 

Yuuri hadn’t been gone long and already the world was forgetting him, like the work he did wasn’t even important anymore. A huge part of him doesn’t want to let that stand, wants to do something,  _ anything _ to give him back the recognition he deserved… but Yuuri doesn’t want that. And he’d give anything to know why.

He sighs again, the one thought that felt like it had been burning a hole in his processor finally spilling past his lips. “Mari, I’ve seen the life he used to lead and what he has now. It must have been one hell of a reason for him to leave and somehow not regret his decision.”

She tenses a little at the comment, taking another few seconds to answer. “It’s- complicated Victor.” She looks apologetic as she continues, as if sensing the chagrin radiating from him. “And it’s his choice about who he wants to share all that with.”

Victor slowly relaxes the fist he didn’t realise he’d been making at his side, trying to cool his frustration a little. “I just wish it was me.”

He means it. He knows he’s only been with Yuuri a relatively short time, but to him, Yuuri is practically his whole world. Yuuri was the one who found him, fixed him, took him in despite knowing he’s just a machine.

_ Yuuri was the person he’d sworn to care for and there isn’t a force on this earth that could make him stop _ . 

Even through all of Victor’s annoyance, he can’t help the warmth in his system whenever he thought of how Yuuri was with him. He’d never treated him like a machine or some object he had mastery over. Ever since he’d first put the fresh memory unit in the back of his head, he’d only ever been kind to him. 

Like he’d seen him as an equal. As a man. And despite all that, Yuuri still wanted to hide this piece of himself away, like he was ashamed of it.

Like Victor couldn’t be trusted to know.

He knows that he’s most likely overthinking it, but it still hurts every time he comes to that conclusion.

“You know, I really don’t think I’ve seen him quite as happy as when he’s with you.”

Victor jerks back to reality at Mari’s sudden words, taken aback a little. “Really?”

She nods, worry dissolving from her expression. “His whole life has either been robotics or helping here.With you around he just seems a lot more relaxed. More...” She waves her free hand a little, as if trying to pluck the right word from the air around them. “Alive.” A soft awe wraps around her words as she continues. “He must really like you.”

Victor takes a few seconds to fully process the words.

_ Happy. He’s making him happy.  _

As an android can feel his programming brimming with satisfaction at the observation. It was what he was built to do, and despite all the glitches recently popping up, he was still able to get his job done and do it well. Yet despite that, he can feel another part of him almost glowing with contentment at the words. It’s a small thought, a silly thought, but one that had been getting increasingly louder with each passing day. And one he’s tired of ignoring.

_ Even if he wasn’t born a machine, he likes to think this is still what he’d want to do _ .

“All I want is to help him,” he eventually replies, words quiet and almost reverent as he looks back to the stairs. “Like he helped me.”

“How did he do that?”

He chuckles a little, wondering how he’d even begin to explain if he could. “It’s complicated.”

Mari raises an eyebrow, a slight scepticism briefly cutting across her face before she turns. “Fair enough. Just- take care of him alright? He really does need someone right now and you’re definitely having some kind of impact.” It’s her time to chuckle, her eyes sparkling with something Victor can’t quite place as she continues. “I think this is the first time I actually want to see where one of my brother’s relationships go.”

As she finishes speaking, he registers the soft pad of feet coming down the stairs. Yuuri practically looks like a zombie as he makes his way towards them, eyes barely open, movements heavy, hair sticking up in various messy spikes from where it was drying. It’s another adorable picture.

Victor turns to Mari, giving her the quickest of winks and the most earnest words he can as they watch the other man slowly fumble towards them with slow, lethargic footsteps.

“I will. I promise.”

***

“Come on- Yuuri. Yuuri! Oh my God.” Yuuri doesn’t even attempt to stay upright as Victor fumbles in his backpack for the apartment keys, instead slouching heavily against him and murmuring something unintelligible. Eventually he manages to get them both inside, closing the door with his foot as he pulls Yuuri’s deadweight into his room.

“Jeez, you sleep like a corpse,” he whispers as he carefully lays Yuuri against his mattress. Victor makes short work of his belt, jeans and socks before pulling back the thick duvet and carefully throwing it over him.

Victor takes a second to look over the sweet image of Yuuri curling in on himself under the sheets, before rising from the bed to fix the crack in the curtains.

_ “Mm wait.” _

Through the darkness he registers the softest touch against his arm, fingers dragging down and looping around his wrist.

Victor stops moving. “Yuuri?” 

He doesn’t verbally respond, but his fingers keep him in a soft grasp. It takes Victor a second to realise the gentle pressure against his skin from Yuuri lightly pulling him down towards the mattress and another moment to realise what he’s trying to do. It’s only when Yuuri shifts towards him a little and continues to tug at his arm does he fully understand.

“Oh.” He relaxes his body and lets himself be dragged down against the bed until the soft pull against his wrist stops. Evidently happy with the presence now laying next to him, Yuuri lets out a quiet, satisfied huff as his head twists further into the pillow. 

Victor waits until Yuuri’s body is fully relaxed before he unhooks the fingers from his skin, gently placing his hand back down on the duvet between them.

After making sure that he hadn’t disturbed him with his movements, Victor rolls onto his side as softly as he can, trying not to shift the bedding around him too much as he goes.

He knows that Yuuri had basically been asleep when he tugged, that he probably just liked the warmth of his presence chasing away the lingering chill of the air outside, yet he can’t quite bring himself to leave just yet. He’d seen Yuuri sleep before, either nodding off at his desk or drifting on the bus to and from the onsen, yet he’d always woken and put himself to bed. Never has he wanted Victor to stay with him.

Certainly not in his bed.

He feels his throat tighten a little as Yuuri subconsciously moves a little closer to him, humming quietly as he goes. It’s an odd sensation. Logically he knows that he isn’t doing anything wrong right now, nothing that Yuuri didn’t want or that could get either of them in trouble.

So why does he feel like he’s about to jump from the roof with no parachute?

_ And why more than anything does he want Yuuri to pull him closer? _

He tries to ignore it, fixing his eyes to the shifting shadows on the ceiling and letting his thoughts wander literally anywhere else.

Eventually his mind drifts back to the conversation they had in the onsen, about what will happen if they find his creator.

Back when he was first activated it was one of their main goals, yet now it was seeming more unsavory by the minute. True he was curious to know why someone would make something like him despite it being so very illegal, but it’s what happens after that has him worrying a little.

He can wish and hope and act as human as he can, but he’ll never be one. No matter how he alters himself, he’ll never be anything other than a machine, never anything more than someone’s property. Specifically, the property of whoever built him. 

If he had a stomach, it would be turning at the thought.

They have no idea who this mystery creator is, no idea what they’re like, or what they want. Victor knows he’s possibly the most advanced piece of technology in the world, so there’s practically no chance that they won’t want him back… and then what will they do to him?

Wipe his memory? Set him to work? Take him apart?

He feels his breathing quicken a little as he turns the possibilities over in his mind.

Would Yuuri just walk away and let it happen?

His hands tighten in the duvet.

No. He wouldn’t. He  _ couldn’t.  _

Yuuri had said he won’t let him get hurt again with words strong enough that Victor couldn’t help but blindly believe him, but did he really mean that? 

He closes his eyes, letting the memory of Yuuri saying those words play over and over again until he feels himself calm a little. 

He’d imagined it dozens of times. Yuuri telling him not to leave, that he doesn’t care who built him, that he wants him to stay. That and Yuuri standing his ground and telling whoever created him that he’d never give him back, that he’d give them anything to let Victor stay with him. It brings a smile to his lips whenever he thinks about it.

He knows that those are hypotheticals and pretty unlikely ones at that, but for once he doesn’t want to think about the most likely outcome here. He just wants to think about being happy. About continuing to make Yuuri happy too.

Victor has known it for weeks at this point, but here, in the shaded blanket of night, he can feel it more strongly than over.

He can’t leave him.

He shifts as close as he can to Yuuri’s sleeping form, opening his eyes wider so he can fully appreciate the soft, relaxed expression spread gently on Yuuri’s sleeping face. 

Victor knows he doesn’t have the capacity to cry, but he can almost feel the sensation starting to burn and well behind his eyes as he lets the small plea escape his lips, barely even a whisper in the shadow.

“ _ Please don’t make me go.” _

 

***

**Log Date: Day 70 With Yuuri**

“Victor I want to try something.”

Victor looks up from where he’s brushing the wayward fur on Vicchan’s back, the small dog wiggling contentedly in his lap. “Oh?”

Yuuri smiles as he approaches the kitchen table, screwdriver in hand. Before Victor can question, he reaches in his shirt pocket and pulls out a flat black unit, roughly the size and shape of a small SD card. “It’s a hardware upgrade of sorts, but I’m not entirely sure if it’ll make a difference.” He offers it forward, expression calm. “I’d still like to try if that’s okay?”

Victor studies the inconspicuous object in Yuuri’s hand for a few seconds before shrugging. “As long as it doesn’t end up wiping my memory, I don’t care.”

Yuuri laughs softly as he rounds the table to stand behind him, one hand brushing through his hair to find the panel near the back of his head. “Okay, let me just-” Victor feels Yuuri gently unscrew and open his cranial casing, before the cool of the screwdriver is poking around the wiring inside. After a few more seconds he feels something click into place and his head is closed back up before Yuuri moves to stand in front of him. “Now open your mouth and lift up your tongue.” 

Victor raises an eyebrow, but compiles.

It’s an odd sensation having Yuuri’s fingers in his mouth. He feels him reach around behind his bottom lip before screwing something just underneath the base of his tongue.

He pulls his fingers out and wipes it on a waiting tissue from his pocket, face curious. “Okay do you feel any different?”

Victor slowly moves his tongue around in his mouth, trying to feel the exact nature of the change. He stops after a few seconds of fruitless moving, nothing of note any different.  “What was it supposed to do?”

Yuuri frowns for a second before reaching into his pocket and handing him a wrapped piece of gum. “Okay. Put this in your mouth.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Shrugging, Victor unwraps the gum and puts it in his mouth, chewing slowly.

His reaction is instant. 

Victor had put things in his mouth before, usually to hold them if both his hands were busy. Sure he could tell the texture, the temperature, the composition if he bothered to analyse the material with the sensors behind his lips, but never had anything he’d put in there ever pulled much of a reaction from him. Until now. 

The second he began to chew the gum, the strangest new sensation was tingling across his tongue and throughout the rest of his mouth. It takes him a few long seconds to even register what’s happening. He can feel the softness of the gum, understand the components that make it stretch and stick the way it does, but now he can feel something else registering more strongly as he continues to move it inside his mouth. It’s, tingling, strong, almost cold…

_ It’s sweet. _

He spits the gum back into his hand and stares back to Yuuri with wide, disbelieving eyes. 

“Oh my God. Yuuri is this- did you-?”

Yuuri’s smile widens. “Can you taste that?”

He looks back down at the gum in his hand, the lingering chilled sweetness from the mint still present against his tongue. “ _ Yes.” _

Yuuri claps his hands together, his smile bigger than Victor had ever seen it before. “Wow. I can’t believe that actually worked.” His words are a little breathless with surprise as he grabs his tablet from the table and starts quickly tapping out some notes. “I am going to have to tell Phichit about this.”

Victor barely registers his words as he puts the gum back in his mouth, chewing vigorously as he tries to memorise every new sensation of flavour that washes across his tongue. He stops when he registers something else, something worse, nasty…  _ bitter _ ? It takes him a second to realise that it’s the taste of his finger still in his mouth, dirty from running it across Vicchan’s back.  He pulls it out, still trying to comprehend exactly what was going in his mouth. “How did you even do this?”

“I still have connections at G-Corp and one handles distributions for medical supplies. That was an experimental unit to try and help coma patients by physically plugging their senses back into their brains. I took the prototype and did my best.” He walks closer and pulls on his chin a little to look inside. “I’m actually very surprised it worked.”

“But- why?”

“Because I thought you’d like it.” Yuuri’s words are as genuinely kind as ever as he answers, gently pulling his hand away. “Just remember you can’t actually eat so don’t swallow anything. I don’t want to spend a day searching around your insides for an old banana or something-”

He doesn’t have time to finish his sentence before Victor has locked him in the tightest hug he can, happiness exploding like fireworks throughout his body at his kindness. This wasn’t some day trip or some trinket he’d thought Victor would appreciate, it was an entirely new  _ sense.  _ Something that probably took days of research and planning to see if this tech was even compatible with Victor. He didn’t need to do this, in no way did this make him a better companion android and yet he still did. Just because he wanted to give him this gift. 

It made him feel valued. Wanted.

More human.

“Thank you. Seriously,” he murmurs to the top of Yuuri’s head, hoping the other man can feel just how grateful he was from this through the press of his fingers against his back and the softness of the words against his hair.

They stay like that for a few seconds before Yuuri shifts so he can look Victor in the eye properly. “You’re very welcome.” He slowly pulls away from Victor’s arms, his cheeks just the tiniest bit rosier. “Plus this means I won’t worry about you poisoning me every time you cook.” He doesn’t bother to hide the small laugh that follows, clearly remembering the God-awful soup Victor had made him a week ago. 

Victor rolls his eyes, idly wondering what it did actually taste like. “True.”

He continues to chuckle softly as he reaches over to grab his keys resting on the edge of the table. “Look I have to go and pick up some things. I’ll be an hour tops.”

“Okay. Have fun,” Victor says as brightly as he can as he waves him into the hallway, his mind still swirling like an ocean of joy at the lingering feelings in his mouth.

As the door shuts, Victor immediately puts his fingers back in his mouth, closing his eyes to try and pick out all the different kinds of flavour he can lick off of them. 

The lingering sweet from the gum, the bitterness from whatever else he’s been touching, something else… something salty maybe?

He pulls them out, desperate to find more data.

Turning, he notices Yuuri’s half-finished toast still lying on the side, jam still shining present on the side of the plate.

He smiles to himself.

***

“Hey I’m back and I- Oh my God.”

Victor looks over from where he’s rooting through the back of the fridge and is met with Yuuri’s mouth hanging open almost comically wide. He watches as the package in his hand slips onto the floor with a soft thump, his expression suffused with shock.

He spits the piece of apple in his mouth into the waiting tissue immediately. “Oh- uh hey Yuuri.” He tries to sound casual and fails, perfectly aware of what the room around them must look like given how he’s spent the last hour.

“What did you do to my kitchen!?” Yuuri erratically gestures to the space around him, eyes darting with bullet speed around the room.

Shutting the fridge and doing a quick scan of the area around him, Victor only now realises the complete state of the room. Piled on almost every surface available are various foods that he’d taken a bite out of and then discarded, the trash can in the corner filled almost to the brim with the tissues that he’d spat them back out into. Every cupboard is open, boxes of dried substances, spices and condiments alike all strewn about, many smeared on various spoons from where he’d tasted them.

Taking in the whole scene, he can’t really blame Yuuri’s reaction.

“Sorry, I’ve just been… gathering data.” He smiles apologetically as he walks over, picking up as many leftovers as he can as he goes. “I guess I got a little carried away.”

He knows this is a mess, but part of him wants to say that Yuuri can’t really blame him for such a reaction. Of course it had been hard to stop. He had an entirely new sense to explore, something neither he nor any other android had ever had the opportunity to feel. Once he’d put Yuuri’s cold, rubbery toast in his mouth and felt the sticky glaze of the jam melt across his tongue, he knew he had to try more. 

Try everything.

“I can see that,” Yuuri replies, his voice levelling out a little as he continues to survey the scene. He stops when his eyes drop to an open box of tea leaves peppered across the table, looking back to Victor with eyebrows raised to his hairline. “My God, have you taken a bite out of  _ everything  _ in here?”

“Pretty much.” He nods slowly as he speaks, trying to lighten the tone a little. “And may I say, I was not prepared for the onion.”

Yuuri keeps slowly walking around the kitchen, huffing out several surprised noises at the various things Victor had put in his mouth. “My cereal, my bread, my fruit, my- coffee granules?” 

“Yeah. They were horrible.” He grimaces at the memory of them melting and spreading over his tongue in a nasty brown paste. “I probably should have just made myself an actual coffee.”

Yuuri blinks a few times and shakes his head, eyes widening when he notices the squash with some failed bites all over the tough skin. “I probably should have seen this coming,” he murmurs softly, grabbing a fresh garbage bag and starting to toss in some of the unsalvageable pieces of food.

Victor casts his eyes down to the floor, suddenly more than a little embarrassed at how far he’d taken this. This isn’t how an android like him is supposed to act, even with all the glitches he’d been feeling sparking through his system lately. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs just as quietly, trying to ignore the sharp slap of every new item landing at the bottom of the bag as Yuuri tosses them in, “this is just all so new to me.” 

He knows his apology is basically worthless. He’d not only made a gigantic mess of Yuuri’s kitchen but also wasted God-knows how much food all for the sake of his own curiosity.

He reaches over to start helping clear up when Yuuri’s hand is suddenly on his. “It’s fine. Really.” His voice is gentle and when Victor raises his head to look him in the face properly, there’s no hint of malice colouring his expression. Just the same genuine smile, the same warming kindness that he feels almost every day they’re together.  

Victor knows that Yuuri has every right to be angry at him, that this could be considered more than a small malfunction on this part… and yet he was still being as understanding as ever. 

Like he always is. 

Relief flows through his system like a cool breeze at the softness of his face and words, the embarrassment in his mind suddenly morphing into something much sweeter than the gum he’d first put in his mouth. 

Yuuri puts down the bag in his other hand, the space between them slowly shrinking as he continues. “I can’t really blame you considering that before now you had no idea what tasting was even like.” He laughs ever so gently as his eyes drop to the block of instant ramen on the side that Victor hadn’t even bothered to cook before biting into. “So what’s been your favourite so far then?”

“I may have taken a bite of your Mother’s leftover katsudon.” He gestures to the tupperware sitting on the side next to the fridge, the lid slightly open. “That was just amazing.”

“It’s my favourite too,” Yuuri’s replies, his tone a tender hush as he smiles. “Ever since I was a child.”

His eyes are a little more distant as he speaks, and for once, Victor can understand why. How something like a taste could trigger such feeling in a person. He’d barely had this sense for an hour and already he can feel it colouring the memories stored in his head. How the cool of fresh mint will forever be associated with that initial explosion of joy at what Yuuri had done to him, how the feel of that toast in his mouth ignited a manic curiosity about food that he isn’t sure is ever going to sated, how even the smell of the apartment was different now, the fragrance from room to room somehow… fuller. How finally he knows what home might smell like.

 It’s just so much. So much that he never thought he could have.

“How am I ever going to thank you for this?” Victor asks quietly, his own fingers slowly turning until they lace through Yuuri’s. He feels the steady flutter of his pulse against his ring finger. It isn’t fast, but it’s not exactly slow either, something about the gentle thump making his own chest feel abnormally tight. He pushes through, desperate to try and find the right words, the ones Yuuri deserves more than anything. “I’m just so-”  _ Grateful for what you did. Overjoyed that I actually feel like I belong somewhere. Confused about what’s actually happening to me.  _ “-Happy.”

He feels the deliberate squeeze of Yuuri’s hand against his own, the reassuring touch resonating stronger than any programmed command through his system. “Good. You deserve to be.” Yuuri exhales slowly, the heat from his breath registering sweet and clear against his face as his eyes bore dark and open into his own. “Always.”

What Victor does next, he does without thinking.

It’s a spark, an instinct, no movement registering in his system but suddenly he finds Yuuri’s cheeks between his hands. There’s the quickest breath of surprise hot against Victor’s mouth before he’s closing the final distance between them and gently pressing their lips together.

Victor’s first thought is that it really doesn’t feel how he’d expected it to. 

He’d put plenty of things against his lips to try and emulate the feeling of another person over the past couple of months: petals, fruit, the silk cushion cover from the couch- none were even remotely close to how it felt to kiss Yuuri. For one thing, it’s drier than he expected. As their lips touch, he can feel how the stiff winter breeze has chapped them a little, the fullness of his bottom lip just that little bit rougher than Victor had imagined it would feel whenever he looked.

And he had been looking. A lot more than he cared to admit.

His second thought is how he can feel the effect of this touch more strongly than any other throughout his entire body. It’s a brief kiss. Chaste. Just a quick press of lips and barely enough to properly appreciate the plump curve of Yuuri’s mouth, yet the feeling is instant. From the palms of his hands lightly cupping his cheeks, to the swirling mess of feelings brewing in his chest, right down to the sensors in the very tips of his toes- he can feel it. Something bright and welcoming, like the initial glow of a freshly lit candle burning solidly through his system. 

Victor isn’t sure if he has the capacity to quite explain what he feels. It’s like a thousand different thoughts and sensations dancing through his mind like a shower of coloured petals in the breeze, the short seconds they remain connected somehow slowing to a stop until he’s sure that there’s nothing else passing around them in this instant. Just the two of them together. One

Victor would give anything to stay wrapped up in the warm, wet confusion of this moment, but as he goes to move his head ever so slightly, he feels something inside him almost painfully jolt back to life. Like a computer waking from sleep mode, so too does something in his mind snap back to focus, instantly jerking him back to reality and pulling him away in a quick movement. 

Yuuri stands still in front of him, his eyes wide behind his glasses. The curve of his mouth is slightly pinker than before, but more than a little agape as he stares Victor down, a long silent moment passing between them.

It takes him a full second to realise exactly what he just did.

Victor had kissed him. On the mouth. Without any kind of invitation. 

He feels his jaw drop to match Yuuri’s.

“I- I didn’t-” No more words pass Victor’s lips as he tries to make sense of everything, the sheer gravity of the situation feeling like they were being pulled into the space where his stomach should be. 

That kiss shouldn’t have happened. In no conceivable scenario could that have  _ ever  _ been the right thing to do… and he’s not even one-hundred percent sure that he’d actually processed the action before doing it. 

“ _ Victor _ ,” Yuuri’s voice is a strained whisper when he finally speaks, the tone matching the confusion painted across apple-red cheeks as he speaks. “Why did you-”

“Vanilla.” The word is past Victor’s lips immediately, his tone as flat as he can make it.

“I- what?”

“That’s what you taste like. Vanilla,” he continues smoothly, trying to keep the screaming internal storm of programming clashes and thoughts out of his voice. “And- milky coffee.”

Yuuri blinks slowly as he process the words, his breathing starting to even a little after a few seconds. “Oh- right. I-It was probably my latte.” 

Victor quickly flicks his tongue to wet his bottom lip, the coffee flavour all but gone but phantom press of Yuuri’s lips still a firm tingling presence against his own. “It’s nice.”

Yuuri keeps staring him down for a few more seconds, confusion still flashing like a neon sign across his face. “Is that why you just did that?” he eventually asks, words slow, almost cautious. “You wanted to know what I tasted like?”

“Why else would I?” 

Victor sees a thought flicker briefly behind Yuuri’s eyes, before he nods slowly, shutting his mouth and quickly dropping his gaze. “Right.”

The awkwardness in the room is thick enough that Victor can practically taste it now. Yuuri doesn’t walk away, but shuffles on his feet a little, his eyes focussed intently on the fingers he’s now rhymically tapping against his legs. Victor knows that tick. He does it when he’s nervous. 

He opens his mouth again, but isn’t exactly sure how to even begin to explain. 

It’s not like kissing Yuuri wasn't something he hadn’t thought about. He’d been curious about so many different human experiences and interactions and how they’d feel if he tried them as well. But this was different. It wasn’t him lying still for hours trying to emulate sleep or softening his limbs until he thinks he’s relaxing- this wasn’t something planned.

He practically feels every one of Yuuri’s taps as the moment continues to stretch long and uncomfortable between them. Never before has Victor wished so hard that he knew what the other man was thinking. He needed to find the right words, find someway to erase what he did and fix this.

Things were so good. He’s not going to let some stupid mistake ruin what they have.

Even if an increasingly loud part of him doesn’t want to call that kiss a mistake

“I- I’m sorry. Truly I am.” Hesitantly Victor takes a few small steps forward, relieved when Yuuri doesn’t move away. He takes a small breath before he continues, trying to straighten the mess of thoughts whirring in his processor into some kind of coherent sentence. “For some reason it just seemed like a good idea at the time, just- with the tasting and everything. All this- it’s just so new to me.” He continues to close the space between them until he can feel the warmth from the other man’s body. He waits until Yuuri lifts his head to meets his gaze before he continues, words small but as sincere as he can make them. “I can see now that it was inappropriate. Please forgive me.”

It feels like a lie on his tongue. He knows he physically can’t be dishonest with Yuuri, but if he’s being truthful to himself, he really doesn’t know what exactly happened. Every move he makes is thought out, a command sent from his central programme to the rest of his body. Nothing he ever does could ever be unexpected to him, could ever do anything to intentionally harm or make a human uncomfortable.

He’s not even sure what his true intention even was. He’d just been so happy, so elated at everything that was happening around him, at feeling wanted and valued... and then  _ that _ .

Like so much of his behaviour recently, it made no logical sense. And it’s more than a little aggravating.

Yuuri takes a few more seconds to respond, Victor counting each one as they tick past in a sour snail’s pace. Once five have elapsed, he opens his mouth to try and apologise again, but stops when something unexpected happens.

Yuuri smiles.

“Victor. It’s fine really. You don’t need to apologise” He brushes the back of his neck as he speaks, the bloom of redness across his cheeks still softly present against the warm hue of his skin. “I’m just sorry your first kiss had to be with me.” The same kindness is in his voice like always, the same gentle sincerity that Victor has come to know oh so well coating his words.

To say Victor is surprised at his reaction is somewhat of an understatement.

Yuuri had been kissed by his android. Something that should  _ never  _ happen unless specifically requested. He has every right to be angry, to be  _ disgusted  _ at his actions and yet there was no malice or shame to be found as he spoke. Victor has seen Yuuri lie and knows he’s terrible at it. Knows that somehow, despite some catastrophic lapse in his judgement, Yuuri really doesn’t care.

Victor can’t help but return his smile, all the tightness throughout his body relaxing, like a rubber band pulled taught finally let go. 

_ Yuuri really is a marvel. _

“I think it’s an honour,” he answers smoothly.  “Not everyone can say they’ve kissed someone so accomplished.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes. “Well I don’t know if anyone else can say they’ve kissed anyone quite like you.”

“Is that a good thing?”

Yuuri chuckles softly for a moment, before turning on his heels to continue clearing away Victor’s mess, his words teasing but clear. “Oh definitely.” 

It’s a flippant comment, but Victor can feel the words already burning somewhere deep and special in his memory. That same heat he keeps randomly feeling pulsing in his chest is back again, a quick flash but very present.

For the longest time he’d wondered what it was, but now? He’s not even sure if he really cares. It isn’t even unpleasant, just… strange. Some odd feeling he really can’t quite put his finger on.

As he walks over to help Yuuri clean, he decides that maybe he doesn’t need to find out. 

It isn’t stopping him working, isn’t hurting Yuuri and isn’t slowing him down. Maybe he doesn’t need to know.

From everything he’s seen and read of humanity, they were far from understanding every feeling they ever had or why they happened. Why should him being a machine make him any different in that regard?

Once the kitchen is mostly clean, Yuuri motions for Victor to sit back on the chair he was in earlier while grabbing his discarded screwdriver.

“If you don’t mind I’d like to take a closer look to see how that tasting system is working now you’ve put my entire kitchen in your mouth,” he says as he rounds the back of the chair. “Always good to take notes.”

Victor leans back, trying not to focus too intently on the warm hands touching the back of his head, how it felt as they brushed through the shorter hairs at his nape. “Of course. Anything for you.”

As he feels the screwdriver delicately making its way through his brain, he can’t help but replay the afternoon’s events. He watches himself through his own eyes going crazy as he puts anything vaguely edible he can find in his mouth, feels his own happiness bloom at every new sensation that dances against his tongue, remembers how his eyes lit up as Yuuri told him he  _ deserved  _ to be happy. He lingers on the moment that follows. The sudden softness of his cheeks in his hands, the warmth of his breath against his mouth, the brief taste of his vanilla sweet lips against his own. 

He knows he shouldn’t replay it, but he does. Again and again and again until he’s taken in every tiny detail of those seconds. Each one… perfect.

It’s then when a new thought pops up. One which halts those memories in his tracks like someone had physically slammed the brakes on his mind.

There was a reason he’d done it. A painfully simple one. Just one that as a machine he knew it would be stupid to even consider.

_ He just wanted to. _

As Yuuri continues, another thought pops up. He instantly shuts it away, suppressing a scoff at how unlikely it was.

Still. It was nice to think about.

_ Maybe Yuuri liked it too. _


	4. Days 88-100 With Yuuri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some truths are finally spilled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well here we are. The end of the road... or is it?
> 
> Make sure to check out the accompanying moodboard [HERE](https://jfmesq.tumblr.com/post/186355141053/and-this-is-the-final-chapter-moodboard-of-our) before you start reading.

* * *

**_Log Date: Day 88 With Yuuri_ **

 

Victor has to admit, it’s very pretty at this time of year.

The city had firmly been held in the icy grasp of winter ever since his activation, but it really was amazing how stunning the sights around the apartment were the closer they got to the new year.

Down every street they went, shops and buildings were slathered in glimmering decorations from various winter holidays, lights of every colour hung around the doors with signs proudly wishing everyone a very happy end of the year. Many were even sporting their own countdown clocks, merrily ticking away until they’d stop on midnight of December 31st. From his brief research into holiday celebrations, he’d expected a loud influx of Christmas memorabilia, yet was surprised when that wasn’t the case. With how diverse the city was, every holiday around this time seemed to be getting equal advertising space. All the neon signs he could see for miles were flashing were flashing images of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza and more in quick succession before each shone in unison, wishing everyone a happy new year. Even with how nauseatingly loud he sometimes found those billboards, he can’t help but find it a very nice touch. 

Even with the chill of the late December winds and the persistent greyed slush piled high at sides of the roads every morning, even the citizens seem to be brighter themselves. Multiple people had been wishing Victor well when he shopped for groceries or walked to the bus stop. By the time the fifth stranger had wished him a happy holidays, he could feel a little spring in his step, the cold week starting to feel a lot brighter. Then again, he was already pretty excited considering the Katsuki’s upcoming new year’s party which Yuuri had happily informed him that they would both be attending.

Victor had to admit that he is a little nervous at the prospect of being around so many new people, but the notion of going to an actual party as a guest and not some kind of help was an extremely appealing thought.

Even though it really shouldn’t be.

When Yuuri had first mentioned it, he had suggested that he should help cater or clean as that would be a better use for him, but he’d been shot down immediately, Yuuri insisting that his parents had invited them to enjoy themselves.

“Consider it a day off,” he’d said brightly when Victor had queried, “you’re always telling me I need to take those.”

His answer had been immediate and, to him, obvious. “Yes, but I don’t. I’d like to help, it’s what I’m programmed to do”

“You can help by having fun and not letting me drink anything,” Yuuri had continued smoothly.  “Since I stopped wining and dining potential business partners, my tolerance has gone way down. More than two or three glasses of champagne and things get- messy.”

Victor had raised an eyebrow at that. “Maybe I want to see that.”

“Well I really don’t need another video of my attempting to pole dance on a wooden beam hitting the internet.” His hand was on Victor shoulder the minute he’d started to search. “And before you even attempt it, I’ve made sure that all copies have been taken down.”

Victor had blinked himself back to reality, definitely not putting a pin in that search to remind himself to looks later.

He’d continued to protest, but at every turn Yuuri had been firm in telling him that they were both definitely going. After the first three objections, he knew that Yuuri wasn’t going to back down no matter what he said, but something about Yuuri being insistent that Victor was coming with him regardless more than a little satisfying to him.

Eventually he backed down, but he had remembered one potential issue. One lingering  part of their deception that may be difficult to keep up with so many of Yuuri’s friends and family around.

The fact that he was still masquerading as Yuuri’s boyfriend.

He wanted to not mention it, just in case it was the one thing that made Yuuri sway on his decision, but he knew it was important. He already knew that if someone looked too closely at their cover story that it had a lot of holes.

He was fairly certain that Yuuri had changed where they met multiple times at this point. He’s never been a good liar.

However, when he’d quietly mentioned it Yuuri had just shaken his head and chuckled softly. “I am aware that people think we’re an item but it’s made a pretty good cover story so far. No one is suspicious and I think you not coming to this party with me would look pretty strange.”

Victor had just nodded at his reasoning, secretly thrilled at how casual he sounded about the fact people were thinking that they were together. Thought that wasn’t anything compares to the warmth he’d felt at what he’d said next, just as simply.

 “Plus I want you there. I love my family but I’m going to need backup and I think having a boyfriend who can start speaking Russian randomly will make a good distraction.”

He’d smiled at the comment initially but it had been going around and around like a fly in his head for the past few days.

_Boyfriend._

He likes when Yuuri says that, something about the word making the whole situation feel more… real.

He knows he shouldn’t think that, that this was just the paper thin lie they were both spinning to avoid a potential jail sentence for Yuuri and destruction for him, but that doesn’t stop him from letting himself imagine. Doesn’t stop himself thinking about them walking arm in arm around that party, Yuuri smiling and happy as he introduces Victor as his partner.

He tries not to let the daydream linger, but it seems to get more vivid everytime he lets his mind wander, his chest getting that little bit tighter and warmer every day they get closer to the new year.

It’s a familiar feeling. One he’s felt multiple times before but never quite this strongly. He’s starting to piece together what it means, but he hasn’t really had the time to ponder on it with everything that’s been going on in the lead up to the party.

While he is very much looking forward to it, it does mean that Yuuri had been putting in a lot more work at the onsen.

Day in day out, they’d both been pulling extra hours to try and get everything ready. With the amount of people invited, there had rooms to set up, extra supplies to unload and put away, not to mention the extra service droids pulled from storage that Yuuri has desperately been trying to get working for three days now.

It had been proving quite the task, even for Yuuri.

Just a cursory glance at the dusty machines showed that they extremely outdated, barely functional models that had been packed away either for their inefficiency or the fact that they’d just stopped working. And Yuuri had been tasked with somehow bringing them back online in just a few days as his parents had no extra budget to hire any new help.

Victor just wishes he could be more help.

He can see the frustration building which each failed reboot, the telltale sound of a screwdriver being flung at a wall ricocheting down the stairs more than once. He does what he can. He’s unable to interface with machines that aren’t switched on, so he picks up every other task Yuuri has on his to-do list, but still feels for him everytime he sees him fruitlessly rewires the old droid, praying that _this_ will be the time they wake up.

With so much to do, they hadn’t had much time to talk, Yuuri falling asleep the instant his head hit the pillow at home and making his way through the rest of the days as a coffee-fueled zombie. While he hates seeing him like this just from a companion’s stand point, there’s another reason he wishes they had the time to have an actual conversation. One that’s been bothering him for over a week now.

He kind of wants to bring up the kiss again.

Yuuri hasn’t mentioned it since it happened so Victor hasn’t pressed, but as the days went on he found it sitting very prominently at the back of his mind and just eating away at him with each passing hour.

He’s just been feeling very… confused about the whole thing. 

He knows he shouldn’t worry. Nothing about Yuuri had seemed any different after it happened and Victor had genuinely believed him when he said that he didn’t mind it’d happened. He’d been treating Victor the same, giving him the same easy smiles and friendly words, no outward signs that he was embarrassed or curious about the whole situation.

Then again, Yuuri had always been so hard to read. 

He knows Yuuri is kind, that Yuuri is thoughtful and absolutely one in a million when it comes to the way he treats machines, but he knows there’s something deeper, some part of himself that he’s not quite showing Victor and now more than ever he wishes he knew what was going on in that big, brilliant brain of his. 

It was partly out of curiosity, but mostly because his own mind is an utter mess right now.

He really hadn’t felt the same since it happened. It isn’t just that now he knows what a kiss feels like, it’s that he knows what kissing _Yuuri_ feels like… and how it was both nothing and everything like he expected. Yes it was just two people pressing their lips together, but somehow it felt like so much more. He’d read countless passages and poems about what first kisses were supposed to feel like: fireworks exploding behind his lips, waves crashing in his mind and the Earth stopping around him, but it hadn’t been like that at all. But then again it hadn’t felt like nothing either. 

He’d been finding it hard to properly articulate, even to himself. It was like for those brief seconds he’d felt more… connected with Yuuri, like every part of him was just that little bit warmer and that he’d just been happier being so close to him.

And those feelings still hadn’t really gone away.

The frustrating part was that he isn’t even sure if this is the right reaction to have. Yuuri is the person he’s closest to in the world, so he really just wants to ask if this is how he normally feels after kissing someone, or what it felt like when Victor has kissed him. Yet every time he goes to, something stops him. Yes, it was mostly because they were both so busy as Yuuri in a state of near-constant exhaustion, but also because he was a little scared of what his answer would be.

He’d been calculating the possible outcomes of events a lot less as of late as he’d been finding little need to, but he had been trying to map out the most likely answer to those particular questions. Strangely, he never came back with any satisfying answers. He chalks it up to not having enough data, but an increasingly loud part of him had been whispering that it’s because he just doesn’t want to know.

He’d tried to shut that voice up the best he could, but no matter what he did it never quite went away. As much as he tries to ignore it, deep down he knows why it’s there.

Because it’s true.

Logically he knows that Yuuri would probably say that he felt nothing, that it was probably just a strange blip in Victor’s programming and it was best it never happened again, but everytime he came to that conclusion he immediately dismissed it, and angrily at that.

If he ignores it, he can live in his little fantasy, hold onto the least likely scenario but the one he knows he wants to be true the most.

That Yuuri actually wanted him to do it.

In the end, he’d decided to ask when the party was over and they were both less overwhelmed with work. Besides, his most pressing issue at the moment is trying to keep Yuuri happy and relaxed despite the mounting frustration he’d been feeling at his own work.

Victor knows the best thing to do is make sure everything else was being done, that Vicchan is being walked and the apartment cleaned, but he wanted to do something else too. Just do something nice for him. Something unexpected.

He’d been thinking about it ever since Yuuri had taken him to the flower festival those weeks ago. The flower crown Yuuri had bought him is as vibrant as ever thanks to his own research on preserving it, still sitting proudly on display in the living room in a near-constant reminder of his kindness. Almost every day Victor found himself idly fingering the waxy petals as he cleaned, for some reason finding himself too scared to put it back on his head, like it might somehow shatter. He knows it’s silly to think that, but the more he looks at it, the more he can’t help but be happy that these flowers are the only thing in the world that are truly _his_ and his alone.

As an android he didn’t have any actual possessions, legally his whole being belonging to whoever owned him along with everything he had, yet for all intents and purposes this crown was his own. This one gift that Yuuri had given him purely because he thought Victor would like it while showing no signs that he wanted it for himself.

With each passing day he wanted to find the perfect way to repay that kindness.

Victor knew he didn’t have the money or resources to get him any real flowers, plus he wanted to give him something that took effort. After much deliberation, he’d settled on the the idea of creating a replica of the crown for him and that doing it with origami was both the cheapest and prettiest options. He’d downloaded the skill set immediately and started on folding each individual flower while Yuuri was either asleep or out, happy in the knowledge that it wouldn’t take long.

That had been the best part of two months ago. And it still isn’t perfect to him yet.

One of the advantages of being an android was being able to pick up any skill almost immediately, human error not a factor when it came to his creations. At least that was supposed to be the case. Victor doesn’t want to think about the amount of paper he’s wasted with each finished crown ending up in the recycling after a quick inspection of his handiwork.

It had been _infuriating._

He could see that each finished crown was technically well made, that each individual fold had been done with the precision that only a machine could produce… and yet somehow he’d been dissatisfied with so many of them. 

He knows that he’d probably over thought it way too much, that he’s been so preoccupied trying make sure it was perfect enough for Yuuri that had been finding any miniscule imperfection and using it as an excuse to start again.

_One of the pieces of paper is slightly blemished._

_It isn’t the right shade of blue._

_The original crown is definitely half an inch wider than this._

He wants to say that he’d wasted his time, that Yuuri would have been happy with his first attempt and he hadn’t needed to spend night after night sitting up hearing the same soft stroke of paper against paper as he tried again and again and again… but he can’t. 

Not when he _finally_ has the perfect flower crown in his hands.

He can’t help but smile as his work as he waits for Yuuri to get out of the shower so they both head to work. 

To the human eye it’s amazing, but to an android’s eye it is undoubtedly perfection in every sense of the word. The edges are taught and crisp, the size and shape almost identical to his own, and the blue paper used a perfect match he’d had printed himself a few weeks back.

He decides to wait until a little later to give it to Yuuri, carefully packing it away as he hears the gentle patter of the shower stopping and the near silent groan of Yuuri dragging himself into the cooler air.

Yuuri hadn’t really been fully awake the past few mornings thanks to the heavy workload, Victor sure that he’d appreciate the gift sometime after lunch when his brain was a little more in order.

Victor isn’t sure if he’s ever been more excited about something.

He tries to keep his smile subtle as Yuuri sleepwalks towards him and then out of the front door, hat firmly on backwards. If Victor didn’t know that he was exhausted down to his bones, he’d almost find the picture adorable. 

_He’d spent weeks getting this gift right. He can wait a few more hours to give it to him._

***

Victor waits just a few minutes too long.

It’s just a little past midday by the time he’s finished interfacing with the various systems downstairs and making sure that they’re all in working order, so decides that now is probably the best time to do it.

Carefully taking the crown from his bag, he heads upstairs to try and find Yuuri, surprised when he isn’t in any of the bedrooms. Walking back to main hall, he briefly considers doing an audio scan of the whole house to try and pick out his voice but quickly banishes the idea. 

_He’s just looking for his friend, no need to get so mechanical after five minutes of searching._

After a few more minutes of aimless wandering around, he eventually picks up the softest voices coming from the kitchen. Even talking so quietly, the telltale cadence of his voice is as clear as bell to Victor. 

As he heads towards him, his hearing becomes more attuned to his voice, the words becoming much clearer.

_“Where the hell have you been?”_

He pauses by the closed door when he picks up the words, surprised by how angry his whisper sounded.

“Yuuri. Don’t-”

“You were seeing her again weren’t you.” Yuuri’s sharp murmur cuts off the other voice immediately. 

“No.”

He recognises the other voice instantly, the gruff timbre belonging to one of the only other human members of staff here: Nishigori. They’d only exchanged a few pleasantries over the past couple of months, Victor normally following Yuuri around and Nishigori spending most of his time in the kitchen or running deliveries, but he’d always come across warm, every word and action exuding confidence wherever he went.

It’s why Victor is a little shocked at how small and defensive he sounds right now.

He knows he should walk away, that this is clearly a private conversation, yet somehow he can’t stop himself as he takes a step to the side and leans against the wall, Yuuri’s muffled whispers becoming a little clearer.

“I’m not stupid. I saw you coming back from that way.”

“And so what if I was? It’s both our choice.” Nishigori’s voice is quickly gaining strength, the faintest thump sounding through the air, most likely from his fist hitting a table or wall.

There’s a brief pause, Victor just picking up a long exhale through the wall that probably came from Yuuri. Whatever is going on, it doesn’t sound like it’s the first time he’s had this conversation.

“You have to stop doing this.”

“You don’t get to say that.”

“You’re going to end up getting hurt,” Yuuri continues, his words getting a little louder, his voice gaining a sharper edge. “She isn’t going to choose you over that life.”

“Just because she didn’t for _you?”_

“That has nothing to do with-”

“Just stop it,” Nishigori cuts him off, his whispers now morphed into a much louder retort.  “You were out of our lives for so long, you do not get to swan back in and start telling us what to do just because you ended up failing at the only thing you were good at to try and feel important again.”

There’s a cold beat of silence between them. 

Victor wants to feel outraged at such words being directed at Yuuri, yet part of him is just curious as to what the hell they were even talking about, who Yuuri could possibly be referring to that had Nishigori saying such cutting remarks.

He presses his ear to the wall a little harder, enough that he can just about hear Yuuri’s uneven breaths, some catching in the back of his throat a little. Victor bites his lip. Those words really had got to him.

“ _Fine_.” He answers eventually, his tone is clipped. Furious.

“Yuuri- I didn’t-”

“Do what the hell you want, I don’t care.”

The force of Yuuri’s retort is stinging despite how quiet it is. Victor immediately picks up his sharp footfalls that follow so he quickly jumps a few feet back, hoping it wasn’t obvious that he’d been listening.

The door slides open with a defiant scrape as he stalks out. His face is thundered and dark, expression narrowed behind his glasses. He doesn’t seem to register Victor as he stomps past him, one hand coming up to rub his eye, the other clenched in a tight fist at his side.

Victor jogs up to catch him, more than a little worried. “Yuuri, are you-”

“Not now Victor.” He doesn’t slow his pace, words coldly dismissive as he turns a corner with clear heavy steps as he heads upstairs.

Victor stands blinking and confused in the hallway for a few seconds.

He’s aware he shouldn’t be hurt by Yuuri’s words, that he’s clearly only angry at whatever just transpired, but that doesn’t stop his fingers curling a little too hard around the delicate paper creation in his hand.

_So much for his perfect moment._

He keeps staring at the spot where he’d walked past him, mind so caught up he barely registers the new presence suddenly standing beside him.

“Oh, hey Victor.”

He turns at the utterance of his own name, Nishigori standing firm and little flushed beside him. “Oh. Hey.” He tries to keep his tone cool and friendly, but feels his facade fail a little, still a little on edge after seeing Yuuri so visibly upset.

Nishigori clearly notices, his expression colouring a little further as he shuffles on his feet awkwardly. He looks over to where Victor is staring before coughing slightly to break the silence, gesturing to his hand. “Uh- cool flower crown.”

Victor looks down to the project in his hand, quickly relaxing his grip when he sees the creases beginning to form from his own frustration. “Thanks.”

“You didn’t happen to hear any of that did you?”

Victor sighs, perfectly aware that Nishigori most likely already knows the answer so there being no need to even attempt to lie. He turns towards him, lowering his voice a little as he answers.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“It’s fine. It’s not like it’s a secret around here anyway.” Nishigori’s words are a little strained as he speaks, something akin to an old annoyance colouring his words.

Even if he doesn’t know what they were talking about, Victor knows the feeling all too well.

“Actually from what I did hear, I really don’t have much of an idea about what you were talking about.”

He raises an eyebrow at Victor’s answer. “So Yuuri really hasn’t told you about me and…” He trails off, eyes widening as Victor’s ignorance sinks in.

“No?”

Nishigori quickly flicks his eyes around the hallway before turning back to Victor, leaning in a little. “Do you want to?”

He’s a little surprised at the offer. Whatever they were talking about seemed pretty personal, the low, angry whispers clear that neither him nor Yuuri wanted people to hear. The last thing he wants to do is pry, but another part of his is still desperate to know what exactly could get Yuuri so riled up. Maybe then he can actually help.

Victor swallows. “You don’t have to tell me.”

Nishigori shakes his head, a small sad smile on his face. “I’d rather you hear it from me than anyone else. Especially if they’re angry at me.” He turns and starts heading back down the hallway. He raises a hand gesturing for Victor to follow without turning around. “Come on.”

He leads him through the kitchen and off into one of the storage rooms, filled with nothing but half emptied crates and the off season linens. Closing the door behind them, Victor sees Nishigori physically exhale before reaching into his pocket and taking out his wallet. Before Victor can question, he’s pulling a carefully folded picture from inside. “It all began here,” he whispers gently as he slowly unfolds it and shows it to Victor, a slight fondness softening his expression.

Victor recognises the picture immediately. 

It’s a digital print, the same one that Yuuri has framed in his apartment and one of the few that aren’t exclusively of him or his family. 

Standing in a pair of adorably tiny ice skates is a much younger Yuuri, his hands grasped firmly on the shoulders of a similarly young Nishigori as they try to keep balance next to the side of the near-empty ice rink they’re occupying. He already knows that the two of them grew up together, Yuuri having mentioned offhandedly a couple of times, but that wasn’t what Victor had focussed on when he first saw the picture. Leaning over the other side of Yuuri was someone else. A girl, perhaps only a year or two older has her sweater-clad arms wrapped around Yuuri’s waist, her own footing a little precarious. All three of them look like they’d been having the time of their lives, their faces pink form either the exercise or the cold, smiles bright and wide as they pose for whoever had taken the shot.

“I’ve seen this picture before,” he murmurs, gently taking the print from Nishigori’s hand. “Whenever I’ve asked Yuuri about it he’s never really wanted to talk about it.” He tries not to let an old annoyance bleed into his tone. He’s tried his best to try and respect how sporadic Yuuri is with details about his past, but at times he can’t help but find it difficult. He flicks his eyes back to the other man, his chest suddenly a little tight. While of course he’d give anything to learn more about Yuuri, he can’t help but be a little apprehensive about what kind of information he’s about to receive.

Whatever those two had been talking about before, it hadn’t sounded easy.

“This must have been taken nearly twenty years ago now.” Nishigori comments quietly as he lightly runs his forefinger against the image of his younger self. “We all look so happy.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen her before,” Victor murmurs as he points to the girl in the picture, another quick scan of his facial database leading no results. 

Nishigori takes a second to respond as he carefully takes the picture back, his fingers pressing a little harder into the faded edged. “That’s Yuuko. We used to go ice skating together, all three of us.” He quickly folds the print again and shoves it back in his wallet. “They used to be my best friends in the whole world.”

Victor catches the slightly sour note cutting through Nishigori’s previously soft tone, the gentle happiness on his face dropping a little.

“Used to be?”

Nishogori sighs again. “Time change. Both of them had such aspirations about their careers. Within ten years Yuuri was off studying robotics across the country which just left Yuuko and me. But she had her own plans as well.”

Victor can almost taste the whisper of sadness lacing Nishigori’s words, but he can tell there’s something more to it, something he can’t quite place. He can read most humans easily, with the complexities built into his programming, most of the time emotions telegraph brighter than the neon signs around the city to him. But not this time. Whatever was going on, there were already so many different emotions all mixed together in his voice: anger, sadness, regret, yet.. fondness? He can pretty easily surmise that the whole thing isn’t particularly comfortable for the other man.

He takes a step closer, lowering his voice a little more. “Are you sure you want to tell me?”

“Yes.” The response is instant. He turns to Victor fully, his words quiet but gaining strength. “It’s such a- a confusing situation and I’d rather you hear it from me first. Plus it feels good to talk to someone with open ears.”

Victor is surprised by the determination in his response. He’s so used to Yuuri being so closed off about his past and his feelings, it’s strange having someone who actually wants to talk about them. Strange… but not unwelcome. He was supposed to make humans more comfortable after all, If he can do that by just listening, then he’s going to do his best.

Nishigori takes another few seconds before he starts, eyes dropping from Victor’s a little. “The three of us grew up together. When you're young, you think that the friends you have then are going to be with you forever so we all thought that too. That we’d all go into business or found some ice show or something. It’s silly when I think about it now, but back then we were so sure that we’d always be in each other's lives.” He pauses for a second, briefly biting his lip before he continues. “When Yuuri left for school and university across the country, Yuuko and I were pretty broken up about it. Of course we wanted him to succeed, but it’s like part of us had gone with him. We didn’t know what was going to happen now it was just the two of us.”

Victor nods again, unsure of exactly how to respond but making sure to show that he’s listening attentively.

“We spent so much time together, studying, working, hanging out. I think I spent more time at her family’s ice rink than my own house by the time we both graduated. And when you spend so much time with someone, especially someone like her...” He trails off until the room is silent again, hands flexing into fists at his sides.

“Nishigori?”

He leans back against the door of the room and slowly slides down until he’s sitting. He runs a hand down his face as he exhales again looking back up to Victor, words softly reverent. “She was my first love. And still my only.”

Victor feels his eyes widen a little.

_Love._

Of all the things that could have been bothering the two of them, Victor is surprised that it hadn’t crossed his mind sooner. In all his vast knowledge of humanity, it’s peaks, it’s triumphs and it’s falls, so often that’s what it all seemed to come back to: Love. 

It’s something he did find himself thinking about now and then, especially in his bid to try and emulate more complex human emotions, yet it’s still something he knows nothing of. Not really anyway.

He slowly lowers himself until he’s kneeling down properly, face level with Nishigori’s. He leaves a little distance, but keeps his expression soft. For the first time since his activation, he really has no idea how to make someone feel better, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to try and remain and comforting presence. 

It’s what he was built for after all.

“So what happened?” He asks gently, wondering if he should try and find something more comfortable for the other man to sit on.

“Work,” Nishigori breathes out, his tone cooly distant. “Ever since she was little, she always had the same dream, she wanted to be a geisha. And she achieved that dream.” He leans back until his head thumps softly against the door. “She works a few districts over.”

Victor takes a second to quickly bring up all the information he has on the modern day geisha. It’s something he’d looked into before, quite a bit of information about them cropping up when he’s done his full research of the city those months ago.

He’s be lying if he said he hadn’t been fascinated. Scrolling through all the images he found, he couldn’t help but marvel at how much of an anomaly they appeared to be in such a tech-heavy area of the world. Most looked like they’d stepped out of some period painting and been superimposed on a modern backdrop, the soft silks and classic makeup they wore such a jarring yet stunning juxtaposition to the steely, industrial backdrops characteristic of most of the city. And it didn’t look like they were going to change their image to match the times anytime soon.

While the practice isn’t quite as popular as it was a few centuries ago, they were still highly sought after for entertainment and one of the top experiences and sights for tourists to the city. It was also apparently still a very distinguished position for those who chose to pursue that as a career. 

And Yuuri and Nishigori knew someone who had.

“So you can’t be together anymore?” 

He asks the question without thinking, regretting it instantly when he sees the words hit the other man’s face like a brick.

“Said it herself when she left,” he murmurs coldly. “Can’t see or contact her family, can’t have any relationships, even when she was just training. She just up and left one day and it was… _hard_.” His voice catches a little on the last word, his hand balling into a fist against the ground. “It was like nothing between us even mattered anymore.”  

Victor’s brow furrows in confusion as he quickly flicks through his own research again. “I thought outside relationships didn’t matter to modern Geishas?”

Nishigori lets out a brief laugh. There’s no humour in it. “Usually they don’t. In so many places having partners or even children doesn’t matter, but the district she chose prides itself on being the most traditional out there.”

Victor freezes his scrolling as he gazes over the exact rituals many geishas had partaken in centuries past. He swallows. “How traditional are we talking?”

“Well not _mizu-age_ traditional but she isn’t allowed to be involved with anyone until she retires. And that’s probably going to be a while.”

“What makes you say that?”

The fist at Nishigori’s side uncurls, his voice relaxing a little as he answers. “This is all she ever wanted. And I’ve seen her, she’s good at it. They way she talks, dances, sings- it’s just so mesmerising to watch. She really was born to entertain and she loves it so much.” His words are the warmest they’ve been all afternoon, the happy whisper in his tone as light as if  he’s talking about the fondest of memories. “Sure she’s free to leave if she wants, but she’s not going to. She could stay there for decades longer if she wanted.”

“And you don’t want to make her choose you over that life,” Victor finishes quietly, the sentiment a little familiar. For the first time since they started talking, he has some spark of what that might feel like.

_The frustration of wanting something so badly but not wanting to push. Of wanting to know what’s best for them but still not being completely sure of what that is or even if it exists._

It’s Victor’s turn to sigh as he sits down properly against the cool wood of the floor. 

“Part of me wants to. But that would just be selfish.” Nishigori continues, an all too familiar frustration lacing his tone. “Yuuri tried when he came back after graduating but that didn’t sway her either.”

“Yuuri tried to get her to quit?”

“No, I think he just asked her if this was what she really wanted.” He lets out another breath, something sharp flickering across his expression. “It was stupid. It’s not our place to try and stop her.”

“Wow.”

“I know I shouldn’t go and see her, I mean it could jeapordise her whole career, but every time she sees me she just looks so happy and I know neither of us wants to stop.” He drops his face to his knees, the stiffness in his frame relaxing as he huffs out the unmistakable sound of defeat. “I don’t know what to do. I just want her to be happy.”

Victor feels himself leaning in a little further, his curiosity burning. “And is she?”

Nishigori slowly lifts his head, eyes shining with conflict. “She loves what she does. But I know she loves me too.”

The pain in his words is achingly clear, his face the softest shade of broken. Strangely Victor can almost feel the sadness starting to bloom in his own chest, the notion of being stuck in such a heartwrenching position something he wishes more than anything that he had any kind of solution to. 

He doesn’t have a lot in his life, but he still has one fear, one fear he’s all to sure Nishigori knows too.

_Being alone._

He swallows the bitterness of the thought down, shifting a little on the ground as he tries to find the right thing to say.

“I’m sorry,” he eventually settles on, mentally chastising himself at how lame he sounds.

“She keeps telling me not to wait for her but- I just can’t imagine just walking away.” Nishigori runs another hand down his face, voice catching slightly as he looks back to Victor.“What am I supposed to do?”

For one of the few times in his life, Victor honestly has nothing to say.

He wants to run the scenarios, wants to find the best _logical_ advice he can give, but for some reason he just… can’t. He has the information, knows two of the three people involved, he should be able to know what the most likely outcome is whatever Nishigori does, yet something inside him is stopping him from even trying.

He should want to be efficient, yet right now all he wants to do is avoid any answer that would end in disappointment. He can see the frustration on Nishigori’s face, hear the tired pain laced into every word as he speaks and all he wants to do is tell him that _somehow_ it’s going to work out. That he’s going to be happy. 

But in all good conscience, he can’t.

Love is something he knows so little of, he can’t be sure anything he’ll say will be any help.

He sighs, trying to not avert his eyes as he answers with small, quiet words. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

It almost pains him to say it, but he really does mean it. 

Nishigori doesn’t seem to be bothered by the words, just leans back against the door again, eyes fixed on some random point on the ceiling. “That makes two of us.”

He tries to ignore the disappointment at his ineffectiveness that’s quickly brewing in his system as he stands, holding out his hand to help the other man up. “I wish I had better advice.” 

He’s surprised when the other man just smiles, shaking his head as he takes Victor’s hand. “It’s fine really. Actually it’s been nice to talk about it with someone else for once.” He holds onto the offered hand a little longer as he stands, Victor surprised again when he twists to shake it properly. “I’ve had so much advice from various people, I didn’t really expect you to have the answer, but thanks for listening.”

Victor blinks at the words as he slowly retracts his hand, surprised that someone was actually thanking him for his lack of understanding.  “Uh- anytime.”

Nishigori takes a second to slowly rub both his hands down his face, before exhaling slowly. Dropping his arms to his side, the same broad smile Victor has been so used to seeing over the past few months in back in place, all semblance of that inner struggle wiped clean as easily as if it was water from a window pane.

“Well if you ever want a sympathetic ear, just come and find me.” He says brightly as he turns towards the door, the depth of their previous conversation nowhere to be found in his voice. “Can’t say I’ll have any good advice either, but I’m pretty good at listening.”

Victor pushes down his confusion at how easily the other man could switch back to being fine, suddenly more than a little tempted by his words.

Every problem he’d ever had before, his only real option to talk had been Yuuri. While having someone like that in his life is something he’ll always be grateful for, the prospect of talking to someone who thought he was human, of having someone offering advice that wasn’t centred on the fact that he was a machine is a prospect he can’t help but want.

He doesn’t have to fake his smile as he walks through the open door, carefully logging all the information he’s just learned away to review properly a little later. “I might take you up on that offer sometime. Thank you.”

As they walk back through the kitchen, he can feel something cutting through his happiness at getting to know a little more about Yuuri’s past, something starting to brew uncomfortably in his system.

He’s supposed to make people feel better, be knowledgeable on all things human to fulfill that purpose best and yet this one simple conversation had almost floored him. While normally that fact alone would have him mentally chastising himself for hours, he can also feel that there’s something more to it, a deeper conflict brewing like the beginnings of a storm in his processor. 

The whole situation with Nishigori, Yuuko, Yuuri … something about it just isn’t sitting well with him and he really doesn’t know why.

He puts a pin in it for now and walks back into the dining room.

_Now really isn’t the time to start worrying yet again about the irregularities popping up in his brain, both he and Yuuri had far too much to do for him to start panicking about his own feelings right now._

He briefly considers heading upstairs to look for Yuuri, but decides against it, aware when Yuuri was annoyed the one thing he appreciated most was being alone. He can try and cheer him up later.

Settling down in a corner, he looks back at the origami crown still firmly clutched in his hands and carefully starts smoothing out the edges again.

Whatever is going on with Victor’s own mind, it can definitely wait.

***

**_Log date: Day 89 With Yuuri_ **

It’s when he sees the picture again in Yuuri’s bedroom that he starts to piece together what’s bothering him.

He’s looked at this print probably a hundred times over the past few months and it’s never annoyed him. But that was before he had any context.

He looks at the picture more closely. He can almost feel the happiness clear as day on each of their faces as they pose. One thing he hadn’t really picked up on before was that Yuuri wasn’t looking directly at the camera, his gaze instead focussed on Yuuko next to him, eyes wide and bright.

He runs his finger across Yuuri’s face, eyebrows knit together as he thinks about what Nishigori and him had talked about yesterday.

_Yuuri had asked her to come back. To give up the career and come back… was it for him?_

Something about that notion had something nasty and cold churning inside him, something that made his fingers curl a little bit harder around the edge of the photo as he continues to stare.

“Victor? Are you okay?”

He’s pulled out of his thoughts by Yuuri’s voice in the doorway. Turning around he sees him casually leaning against the frame, coffee in one hand, keys in the other.

“I’m fine,” he answers quickly, hoping Yuuri doesn’t question exactly why he’s staring at that particular photo.

“Good,” he smiles, shaking the keys in his left hand with a gentle vigour. “Come on, we need to get to work.”

Victor goes to put the picture back on his bedside table but stops, exactly what was making him feel so weird suddenly flashing clear as day through his mind.

“Did you love her?” 

Yuuri freezes in the doorway, eyes widening a little at Victor’s sudden question. “What?”

“Yuuko,” he says slowly, taking a breath to gather courage as points to the picture still grasped in his hand. “Did you love her?”

Yuuri takes a few seconds to respond, the confusion on his face slowly morphing into a flat understanding.

“You’ve been talking to Nishigori haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

He sighs, eyes crinkling behind his glasses with either annoyance or a slight fear. “Why are you asking me that?” His words are measured and careful, but Victor can see his other hand tighten a little around his travel mug.

“I heard you two arguing,” he answers quietly, holding up a hand to quickly justify himself when Yuuri opens his mouth. “I didn’t mean to overhear I swear, but afterwards Nishigori and I talked a little and he really made it sound like...” He trails off before he can say the words, something making them feel like they were stuck like honey in his throat.

He watches as Yuuri takes in what he’s just said, a myriad of different emotions flickering across his face as Victor waits. He can almost hear the gears turning in his head. His fingers start drumming in an irregular pattern against his mug, his bottom lip disappearing into his mouth as Victor stares him down. 

Victor knows those ticks. Yuuri _really_ doesn’t want to talk about this.

“It’s a... difficult situation,” he eventually answers, words stuttering out in a quiet sigh. “I knew it was what she wanted but I just didn’t know if she could handle being away from her family for so long. And, if I’m being honest, I was being selfish asking her to think about it. When I came back from school I was sad that she wasn’t there anymore and I knew I had to at least try.” He eventually breaks eye contact with Victor, dropping his eyes to a random spot on the floor as he continues. “It was a long time ago. I was young and stupid.”

Victor can feel how hard this is for Yuuri, every mechanical part of him screaming at him to shut up and make feel better but his curiosity is already burning too bright. He has to know. 

“Because you loved her,” he says softly. It’s not a question.

“Yes.” He doesn’t lift his eyes, the fingers tapping against his mug finally stilling. 

Victor nods slowly at the affirmation and turns back to the picture. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, unsurprised by how cool his voice sounds. 

He wants to feel for him, tell him that he’s here and that it’s going to be alright but he just… can’t. Something about that one simple word has all of his logical functions stopped, his eyes focussed on the tiny joyful Yuuri with Yuuko’s hands wrapped so securely around his waist.

He’s not sure if he’s ever seen Yuuri look so carefree. Definitely not while he’s been around. 

Logically he knows this shouldn’t be bothering him, that he has no right to be pressing Yuuri for this kind of information and all this is in the past anyway.

He closes his eyes for a second, fingers clamping down a little too hard against the picture frame in his hand.

_So why does it feel like his chest is caught in a vice?_

Opening his eyes, Victor catches the blurred shape of Yuuri’s reflection in the glass of the picture frame, now a little closer to him. He turns to meet him slowly, hoping the confused anguish inside isn’t showing as obviously on his face as well.

“It’s fine. It was a long time ago,” Yuuri says carefully as he closes the distance between them. “I mean, back then I guess I just really _thought_ I loved her.”

His brow furrows a little at the words.

“So, you didn’t?” The tightness in his chest relaxes a fraction as he speaks.

_Does that mean he could-_

“No? I mean- I knew I didn’t want her to stay away but I knew how Nishigori felt and we’d talked about it and we were all so close...”

Victor holds up his hand again in an attempt to stop the mess of words pouring from Yuuri’s mouth. “Yuuri.” 

Yuuri ignores the signal, eyes nervously sweeping around the room as he continues to talk. “She wanted that job more than anything and I _know_ she’s so good at it and-”

“ _Yuuri.”_

“I mean love is so complicated and I knew that I wanted her to stay and-”

“Yuuri!” The sound of his name being shouted by Victor is like a bullet ripping through his rambling. Yuuri immediately shuts his mouth, flinching back at the outburst. 

He knows he should never shout, never try and assert himself over another human, but right now he has to find out the truth. He _needs_ to know what it is that Yuuri really wants. 

He tries to relax the fists he didn’t realise he’s formed at his sides, trying his best to keep his voice as calm and level as he can. “Do you love her?”

Yuuri opens his mouth, then almost immediately closes it. His expression is a little wary, Victor’s iced frustration no doubt reflected plain as day on his face. 

He holds Victor’s gaze for a few more seconds before, releasing the lip he’s been worrying between his teeth, voice small. “It’s complicated.”

Victor doesn’t fight the strike of annoyance that rips through him at his answer, something about those two words digging into his mind with sharp, ugly claws. “What does that even mean?”

Yuuri lets out a small, defeated sigh. “It means that it’s… complicated. There’s nothing else to say.”

Victor feels something inside him short circuit.

“Everything in your life is just _so complicated_ isn’t it? Absolutely no way I’d ever be able to comprehend any of it is there?” The words shake past his lips loud and indignant, all the frustration and turmoil of the past couple of months finally spilling free like a dam bursting as he stares Yuuri down with narrowed eyes.

He’s never spoken to anyone like this, let alone Yuuri. Every part of his programme instructs him to be friendly. Cordial. To never make anyone feel disheartened or scared, and yet here he is angrily chewing out the person who fixed him for no proper reason.

Something inside Victor had fundamentally broken and right now he really can’t find it in him to care.

Yuuri’s eyes are wide with shock at his words, his mouth dropping open a little. “Victor-”

“I’m not human,” he interrupts, his words still hot and strained. “Of course I know that, but why do I feel like there are so many things you won’t tell me because you don’t think I’ll understand?” He stops and takes a forced breath for a second, pushing down some of the truly angry things ready to slip past his lips. “You know everything about me that I do,” he continues, a little quieter. “Why can’t you tell me anything?”

Yuuri audibly swallows as he takes in Victor’s words, his expression still stunned behind his glasses. He doesn’t say anything.

The silence between them is deafening, the anger Victor feels crackling like fire in his system not subsiding as the seconds tick past long and slow.  “It feels like you don’t respect me,” Victor eventually continues. They’re words he’s wanted to say outloud for so long, yet they don’t feel good as he speaks, the hurt flashing across Yuuri’s face cutting like a physical strike through his mind.

Yuuri sighs again. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” 

“It’s-” He quickly shuts his mouth again, like he was physically restraining himself from saying what it he wants. He looks down to the photo beside Victor and then slowly back to him, his expression small. “I know you’re curious, but I just can’t explain it.”

Victor lets out a short cold laugh. “Of course you can’t.”

He wants to stay angry, but now he really does know that there’s nothing else to say. He’d asked point blank and Yuuri still can’t be completely honest with him… and truthfully he isn’t that surprised. The only thing he’s feeling right now is disappointment and for the first time ever, he just wants to be by himself.

He turns to readjust the picture before walking towards the hall, eyes focussed on a spot _above_ Yuuri’s head.

_He really doesn’t want to see how what he just said made him feel._

“Victor-”

“ _Don’t,”_ he snaps, pusing briefly as he passes Yuuri on his way out. “It was stupid to think you might actually want my help with anything other than all this menial crap.”

He can almost feel how heavily the statement hangs in the air as he keeps moving forward, stalking quickly into the kitchen. The door swings shut with a slam so violent he hears the plates rattle in the cupboards.

He stares at the flat white of the wall as he tries to cool off a little, every forced breath he takes hot and shaky as his anger pulses through his brain.

He shouldn’t have done that. He knows he really shouldn’t have even been able to even attempt to be so disrespectful to Yuuri, yet when he’d not even tried to explain it was as if something inside Victor had just snapped. Like nothing could stop him spitting out his frustration with cold, bitter words.

He was Yuuri’s machine, his _thing._ Not human enough to be trusted with any kind of real personal information and so should definitely not be capable of talking back like some kind of bratty child.

The severity of what he’s just done takes a few minutes to sink it, his rage slowly melting into more of a confused fear. He’s not like any other machine on the planet, with how complex his programming is he should always been running perfectly. 

For an AI as advanced as him, acting like that really is not okay. Ever.

He sits down in the kitchen chair behind him, the coldest smirk flashing across his features.

_“Fuck. I really am broken.”_

He’d been wondering about it for months at this point, if all these strange actions and feelings had meant something greater. Before, he’d waved them away as small glitches, or curiosity gone too far, silly actions but ultimately nothing to stop him completing his purpose. He remembers pretty definitely coming to the conclusion that he didn’t care, that he wasn’t hurting Yuuri so there was no need to poke around in his inner workings or deem himself defective. Until now.

Of course he knows that he isn’t human, but now he’s barely even performing like a competent machine. And he has no idea what to do.

He stays motionless in the chair for thirty-seven minutes. He counts each second, anything to try and take his mind off of the panic he can feel brewing at such a heinous malfunction. He knows he really needs to apologise, but something about facing Yuuri again has that same feeling tightening in his chest like an iron vice clamping down on his skeleton. He tries not to imagine what Yuuri might say, what he might _do_ after something like that, every minute he stays shut away like a coward only weakening his case that he’s still fit as a functional companion.

It’s a small apartment so he knows he can’t stay here or expect Yuuri to avoid him forever. Part of him wishes he’d walked out the front door instead, but he’s far too embarrassed to try now, especially as it was very likely he’ll bump into the other man in the hallway. 

Inside the kitchen he stays, mulling over his choices.

He counts for another eight minutes, every second seeming like it’s being dragged through molasses as he goes. He knows he isn’t counting to any particular number, just that perhaps after a while he’ll actually have formulated some kind of plan to set things back to normal, that there will be some way to erase the last hour from Yuuri’s memory as easily as he can from his own.

He’s coming up on fifteen minutes when something finally breaks the silence, the sound of the kitchen door slowly opening and closing.

As Yuuri walks towards him, his first instinct is to look away. He wants more than anything to somehow fold himself away and not have to look at Yuuri’s disappointed face, but he knows he can’t. He’d already wasted enough time hiding away and worrying, the least he can do is look the man who brought him back to life in the eye as he says that he’s sorry. 

Lifting his head, surprised to see that Yuuri doesn’t look angry as he sits down next to him.

His eyes look a little more tired behind his glasses, his bottom lip wet and cracked like he’d been chewing it violently ever since Victor had stormed off. As he settles down, Victor notices his hands fidgeting in his lap, his skin red where he’d either been wringing or rubbing them.

Victor blinks as he takes in the full picture, pained when he realises that he’d clearly been just as nervous to come and speak to him.

“Victor I need you to listen to me very carefully,” he says, words surprisingly firm and clear as he holds Victor’s gaze. 

Victor doesn’t respond, but nods slowly trying desperately not to stare too intently at the obvious signs of Yuuri’s stress. Stress _he’d_ caused.

Yuuri takes a long breath, the hands fiddling in his lap eventually stilling as he speaks. “It’s not like I don’t want to tell you things, and I promise it’s not because I don’t think you’ll understand them.” He bites down on his sore lip again for a second before dropping his eyes a little, tone low. “Some things I just don’t want to relive.”

Victor takes in his words carefully before shifting a little closer, keeping his words gentle. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so frustrated. And I really shouldn’t have said what I did.”

He smiles a little at Victor’s apology, but gently shakes his head. “It’s fine. Really. You have a right to feel that way.” He sighs again. “I can’t keep pushing away conversations just because they make me feel uncomfortable.”

Victor can tell that there’s more that he wants to say, the long drawn out pauses between each sentence thick with nerves Victor can almost taste. He wants to tell him that it’s okay, that he doesn’t need to say anymore, but his curiosity is starting to outweigh the sympathy burned into his programme. He sits still and quiet, keep his expression soft as Yuuri takes another steadying breath his eyes still focused on the hands in his lap.

“I did love her and… I still do,” he eventually murmurs, words quietly ashamed like he’s admitting some kind of dirty secret. 

Despite the chill he can feel spreading through him at the words, Victor doesn’t press for more information immediately. Instead, he shifts forward a little more in his chair, one hand slowly reaching out to rest on the other man’s knee. It’s the best way he can say _“I’m here, please tell me,”_ without words. He hopes more than anything that Yuuri understands.

Yuuri’s eyes focus out of his faraway worry at the touch and slowly pull up to meet Victor’s face again. He smiles a little at the gesture as he continues. “It was more as a friend or another sister I think. I was confused about my feelings for so long, and to be honest I still am.” His hands tighten in his lap again, eyes crinkling a little behind his glasses. “It’s why I don’t like talking about it.”

Victor nods slowly again, not moving his hand as he processes Yuuri’s words.

He does love her, but maybe not in the way Victor had been assuming.

He feels something spread through him at the realisation, like a cool breeze pushing away the tight anguish that had been gripped so tightly in his chest.

He’s relieved.

He has his answer. True, it isn’t as clear as he might have expected, but that isn’t important.

Yuuri had _finally_ opened up to him, even if just a little.

He can’t help the way his smile widens a little as Yuuri collects himself again.

“Thank you for telling me that,” Victor says softly,  “I don’t know what I can do to help you here, but I can definitely try.”

“I don’t think there’s a lot you can do if I’m honest,” he chuckles quietly as he shifts to squeeze the hand resting on his leg. “But the fact you care enough to try really does mean a lot to me.”

Once again Victor chooses to ignore the brief sparks of hear flaring under his skin at the touch, returning Yuuri’s soft laugh as he raises an eyebrow. “Did you expect anything else from me?”

Yuuri rolls his eyes, smile still in place. “Never.”

And just like that, everything is right with the world again.

Victor feels all his worry melt away as they sit in a more comfortable quiet. Yuuri had once again put up with one of Victor’s weird glitches and not just forgiven him, but helped. 

He doesn’t know why he was so scared. Of everything he’s learned about Yuuri since his activation, there’s one thing about him that he’ll always be thankful for.

No matter happens, Yuuri is always going to meet him where his head it at.

Leaning back, he notices the travel mug on the table with its lid off. A quick scan shows the contents to be long cold, so he starts to stand, ready to make Yuuri a fresh one.

A hand on his arm stops him.

Looking back to Yuuri, he has the same expression on his face from earlier, one where he clearly had something else to say. Something difficult.

“You know that I trust you right?” Yuuri says quietly as Victor sits back down, eyes gentle and dark as he speaks. “The fact that you’re a machine doesn’t change that at all.”

Victor blinks in surprise at the words. “Of course I do.”

Yuuri cocks his head. “Given what happened earlier, I don’t think that’s entirely true.”

“I do, really.” It’s his turn to pause as he quickly considers if what he’s about to say is a good idea. 

He takes a breath. They were already here, he might as well. “ But if I’m honest, I just wish I knew more about you.”

Yuuri’s eyebrows furrow at the statement. “You know most of it. There’s not much else to say.”

“There really is.”

Yuuri continues to look a little puzzled for a few more seconds before realisation dawns on his expression.

His face falls a little.

“You want to know why I left G-corp don’t you.” 

Victor can hear the slight strain in Yuuri’s voice, but he isn’t even going to attempt to claim otherwise. He needs to know. “Yes. But I know you don’t want to tell me.” He watches the conflict flicker across Yuuri’s face as he continues, desperately trying to find the right way to phrase what he’s about to say. “People keep telling me that the reason is complicated and I think it just got to me.”

Yuuri nods slowly. “I want to tell you. Really, I do.” His eyes drop again. “I’m just not ready.”

The sad frustration is as clear in Yuuri’s voice as it is on his face. Victor almost instantly regrets his decision, quickly opening his mouth to backtrack.

Nothing was worth making Yuuri this uncomfortable.

“Yuuri. It’s _okay,”_ he says gently, waiting until the other man looks back up before he continues. “Of course I want to know but you really don’t need to tell me.”

“I mean it.” His words are suddenly a little harder, his eyes flicked back up to Victor’s face. “Victor, I love talking to you. And it’s not just that you can figure out likely outcomes.” He takes another breath, closing his eyes briefly as his voice softens. “You always seem to have the right answer even if it turns out not to be helpful, so I think that if I tell you, I might actually feel better about the whole thing.”

The words sink into Victor’s mind like a lead weight, his ears suddenly feeling rather hot . “Really?”

Yuuri nods, small smile back in place. “So, I will tell you why I quit. I promise.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Before the end of January, I’ll tell you. I swear it.”

Victor’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise at his words.

The end of January. 41 days. In 41 days he’ll have his answer. 

If he had a stomach, he imagines it would be flipping at the idea.

Only his closest family and friends know why that happened. With Yuuri being so notoriously secretive, not one single source had been able to get any kind of answer from him. 

Victor used to spend hours scoring every inch of the internet to try and get some kind of clearer idea about _who_ exactly Yuuri was and never had he come up with any clear results.

He’d stopped doing that a while ago. He knows exactly what kind of man Yuuri is now… and Yuuri trusts him enough to tell himself something he only shared with those closest to him. 

_He really has been doing a good job._

“Okay,” he eventually breathes out, trying to hide the excitement warming through his body.

Yuuri tugs his lip between his teeth again for a few seconds, eyes dropping to the middle distance. “It was such a big part of my life. Anyone who recognises me instantly judges me for my choice and tells me that I’m such a fool for leaving.”

“Well that’s just rude.”

Yuuri shrugs. “It’s partially true. Any idiot can google my old net worth but that was all tied up in the company. All my other assets I liquidated and gave to my family and use to help afford this place.” His body sags a little as he speaks. “This isn’t the life I really envisioned for myself when I was younger.”

His voice is low and shaky, words getting quieter as he looks anywhere but Victor. 

He could pick those cues up a mile away. He’s ashamed.

Victor jumps in immediately, scooting in a little closer so he can catch Yuuri’s eye again. “Well you don’t regret it, do you? You’ve told me that before.”

“It’s true. I don’t.” 

“I think if you’d stayed you would have been miserable. Right now, we just have to find something that will make you happy.” He enunciates each word as clearly as he can while still keeping his voice softly revenant. “You really deserve to be happy.”

The words are the easiest he’s spoken all day, and he knows why. He means them, with every fiber of his being.

He’s seen how _hard_ Yuuri works, how much he loves his family, how much care and effort he put into even the most basic of tasks- and that isn’t even scratching the surface of everything he’s done for Victor, things that no other human probably would have done for an android like him.

He doesn’t need a programme to tell him that he needs to be good to Yuuri. For everything he’s done, for everything he is, all Victor wants to do is give him all the happiness in the world and not just because he’s grateful. Because he deserves it.

Yuuri’s expression melts into a soft smile, his cheeks warming to the lightest shade of pink.

“It’s funny when I think about it,” he murmurs. “Of all the people that could have found you, I did. If I hadn’t quit then I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have seen you.” He quickly looks down to his hands before back to Victor, the blush on his cheeks darkening just a little. “It almost feels like the universe was telling me I’d made the right decision.”

Victor can feel his own cheeks warm a little at the words. He knows neither of them really believe in any kind of concept as fate, but the sentiment alone is enough to make the world around him feel as pink as Yuuri’s blush.

“I’m thankful everyday that it was you,” he replies, his voice airily light. “If it had been literally anyone else I- I don’t like to think what might have happened to me.”

He quickly pushes down the possibilities he’d considered before. The violence, the deactivation, the thoughts of being pulled away from the one person who truly makes him happy. He refuses to let the sweetness of their moment be poisoned by hypotheticals.

Not now. Hopefully not ever.

“Victor.” Yuuri’s voice suddenly has a slightly more serious edge, his smile dropping ever so slightly. “If I’m one hundred percent honest, I don’t know if I want to find who built you anymore.”

Victor’s own smile drops a little in slightly confused surprise.

_Okay, that’s definitely not something Victor thought Yuuri would ever say._

“Why?”

“There are so many answers for why you were built the way that you are, and so many of them aren’t particularly pleasant,” Yuuri answers quietly, not quite meeting Victor’s eye. “Of course I want to know how they managed to create you but- I’m just worried that… that they might have...” He trails off, quickly ducking his head with a dark, embarrassed expression. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. That was probably the worst thing I could have told you.” He murmurs against his hands. “Just forget I said anything.”

 Victor blinks as he takes in Yuuri’s words. 

 _He really thought that was the worst thing he could say?_  

He shakes his head at the sentiment, surprised that Yuuri really didn’t know what Victor had been thinking all this time at all.

“Yuuri, you don’t think I haven’t thought the same thing? Believe me I’ve run the scenarios and so many of them are just _awful_ . I know I’m a companion. That’s hardwired in, but I don’t think they had to make me this realistic for that purpose.” He finds himself crossing his legs, trying not to think of all the things someone might have done to him before he lost his memory. “You know I’m fully... _functional_ down there and I don’t know if I want to know why either.”

Yuuri nods in understanding, before turning more firmly towards him, his face serious. “Victor. Do you want to find your creator?”

Victor nearly chokes on the air at the question.

“I belong to them,” he answers quietly, choosing his words as carefully as he can. “Legally I mean, so logically I should want to.” 

“But?”

“They could be a wonderful person. There could be completely innocent and well thought out reason why I’m like this and why I ended up torn apart in a dumpster.”

“Victor.”

“I don’t know!” His final answer is a frustrated shout.  “I’m so confused about it. I want to know why I’m here and I want my old memories back but-” He takes another breath, trying not to spill forth every terrifying thought he’s had about what and who he really is. He’s _Yuuri’s._ That’s all that matters. “I think I might be scared. And that’s not something I thought I could be.”

It’s true. Of all the strange and conflicting thoughts and emotions he’s had, one he never thought he could logically developed was a sense of fear. No robot needed it, so why should he feel like that. And yet here he is. Wanting to do anything to not be taken, to be shut down or dismantled, wanting to continue his _life._

It’s one of the worst feelings he’s ever had, and it’s one he’s found sneaking up on him more and more recently.

“Victor, listen to me.” Firm, warm hands are suddenly cupping his cheeks, his face being gently guided until he’s looking directly at Yuuri. His eyes are brightly determined, his voice quietly reassuring. “I meant what I said before. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. And if you don’t want to find your creator, then we don’t have to.”

Victor takes a few seconds to process exactly what Yuuri just said.

_“Really?”_

“Really.” Yuuri nods, his fingers still warm and firm around Victor’s face. “And if you change your mind, then of course I’ll be there to help you.”

Victor feels the weight of a thousand fears release from his body at the words.

Yuuri wants him to stay. Yuuri is happy and he wants him to stay.

The thought alone has any previous worry dissolving like sugar in warm tea, everything he thought was wrong with him suddenly gone.

The one thing he wanted more than anything was happening. The thing that had him physically begging Yuuri’s sleeping body had come true and suddenly it feels like all the fireworks in Central are bursting through his mind in beautiful sparkles of colour.

He knows the happiness inside is reflected clear as the sun from his face, his smile so wide he can feel it stretching his cheeks to an almost comical degree.

He really is going to be okay.

“Thank you. So much,” his reaches up to lightly places his hands on top of Yuuri’s, the warm curve a comforting touch against his face. “I really thought that you’d want to find them.”

Yuuri laughs gently, the puffs of warm air blowing softly across Victor’s nose. “You think I’d be so desperate to get rid of you?”

“Do you?”

“Well that depends on if I want my peace and quiet back,” he mutters teasingly as he pulls his hands away. “Or whether or not I trust you to cook for me again.”

“Well thanks to someone I do know how to taste now.”

“I know.”

Victor rolls his eyes, the joy in his system still pulsing in a wild hot mess as he watches Yuuri’s smile grow to match his own. It’s a beautiful sight. 

While he doesn’t think there are words in any language living or dead that could convey his gratitude, he’s definitely going to try. “Yuuri I- I just want to say that- that I-“

_Am forever indebted to you_

_Want to stay with you forever_

_Hope I can make you happy._

He pauses for a millisecond, annoyed at how none of those were even remotely right. 

He reaches down as far as he can go, ready to say the first thing that springs to mind when looking at Yuuri right now. Taking in the contented look on the other man’s face, he feels it, something loud and honest desperate to be said.

_I love you._

His body instantly locks up as that thought flashes across his mind.

_He didn’t just think that. He couldn’t have thought that._

He did just think that. He’s still thinking that. Looking at Yuuri’s face right now he can feel the words burning themselves into his brain with the intensity of a thousand blowtorches.

He feels every alarm in his system blare simultaneously with a deafening wail.

“Victor? Are you okay?” 

He blinks himself back to the present when he hears Yuuri’s words, his tone a little wary.

“Yes, perfectly?” He says quickly, hoping the fact that every warning in his programming is screaming at him isn’t showing on his face. “Why do you ask?”

“You just kind of trailed off there.” Yuuri leans in a little, eyes flicking across his face in a methodical manner. “Is your system doing okay?”

“Of course,” he says as brightly as he can, forcing himself to smile again. “I just- didn’t know how to thank you.”

That was a lie. He shouldn’t be able to do that...and yet he did, though that’s far from his biggest problem right now. 

He feels it pile onto the mess of his mind with an almost physical weight.

Yuuri looks at him for a few seconds longer before leaning back, evidently satisfied with Victor’s answer. “You don’t need to thank me,” he says gently as he stands, light smile firmly back in place. “Now come on, we’re late as it is.”

Victor nods again quickly looking around for a spot to think before heading into the bathroom and locking the door. “I’ll just be a minute,” he calls as smoothly as he can, “I just need to check something.”

He puts down the lid on the toilet and sits, the words he’d so nearly said looping over and over in his mind until they started to lose their meaning.

That should have been impossible. Not just impossible but _unthinkable._

But then again, so many things he’s been doing recently had no logical rhyme or reason, was this really that much of a stretch?

He looks at himself in the mirror, his face pinched and somehow paler than before as he thinks.

_Could he actually love Yuuri?_

He doesn’t want to leave. He’s happy when they’re together. He wants to stay with him. 

But that was just logical right? Anyone in his position would think the same thing wouldn’t they?

He can almost hear the whir of the logic centre of his processor as he tries to piece what just happened together, every part of his brain screaming conflicting statements at him.

_You love him._

_No you don’t, you’re just grateful to him._

_The only thing you want to do is make him happy._

_You know you want to kiss him again._

He grips the sides of his head as every thought bounces around his mind with in a dull ache, every part of his brain lit up like some kind of toxic christmas tree that he can’t shut off.

He knows he can’t get migraines, but all these loud commands shouting through his brain feels like a pretty close approximation. All he wants to do is shut down. For everything to be quiet for just five minutes.

He suddenly finds himself on the bathroom floor, his forehead pressed to the cool tiles 

After a few minutes of stillness, the voices begin to turn to whispers, his mind slowly quieting as he finds his equilibrium again.

He sits up and rests his head against the door, trying to relax himself.

That was… intense to say the least. And so very unhelpful.

He knows he needs to run a diagnostic and _soon,_ but that would take all day. Him and Yuuti do not have the time right now. A preliminary scan shows nothing wrong, so there’s nothing he can do right now except try to pull himself together and hope it doesn’t happen again.

And also try and figure out if what he feels is even real.

His mind starts to pulses with confusion again as he considers the possibility.

He might love him. So many signs point to that… but he needs to be _sure_ before he does anything else.

He drums his fingers against the floor, using any semblance of processing power that he has left to try and think of a plan.

He can’t ask Yuuri. Despite everything he just said to Victor, he knows that this was too big and too confusing of a question to talk to him about. Plus he does _not_ want to think about what his reaction might be if he drops _“I love you”_ into a conversation.

He stops that train of thought immediately, not letting a single possibility play out in front of him.

His fingers drum a little harder against the ground.

His scans aren’t helping. Maybe he needs to stop thinking about this like a machine.

Maybe he can troubleshoot this problem physically.

His fingers still.

That was it. An actual person could probably help. Someone who knows what love feels like and who could explain it to him so he knows for sure. 

He thinks back through the small list of people he’s actually had contact with, trying to isolate the most likely candidate. 

He finds who he’s looking for immediately, smiling a little when he brings up their face to his retina display.

He knows what he has to do now.

***

Victor has to wait until the end of the day to ask, both his and Yuuri’s workloads still very busy. Only when the black curtain of night has properly fallen can he slip away, making a beeline for the kitchen in the hopes Nishigori is there. 

It’s quieter now, most of the guests having either headed home or gone to sleep so the one android on duty is packing the leftover vegetables in the walk-in fridge while he watches.

He doesn’t hesitate as he walks in, Nishigori waving him over as he catches Victor’s eye. He hauls a large sack of peeled onions on the steel of the countertop as Victor stands next to him, smile bright as he pulls a large knife from the block in front of him. “Hey Victor. What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to ask you something.” He steps back slightly at the sound of his knife slamming through the first onion, but presses on, determined. “I figured you would be the best person to come to about this.”

Nishigori raises an eyebrow before turning down to the large pile of vegetables as he continues to chop. “Well I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.” The disappointment must have flashed clearly across Victor’s face, as his expression softens slightly, the knife in his hand carefully put down against the side. “Tell you what,” he murmurs as he reaches back to block in front of him and picking up another onion. “Help me prepare these for tomorrow and I’m all yours.” He carefully presses both into Victor’s hands and shuffles down the countertop a little, leaving space for him.

Victor doesn’t need to be told twice, a small spark of happiness flooding through his circuits as he carefully holds the knife in his hand and sizes up the onion in front of him. He’d already downloaded every video he could find on cooking Yuuri’s favourite dishes, chopping an onion was no problem.

Both of Nishigori’s’ eyebrows raise in surprise at how quickly he was chopping, and probably at how precise each cut was, each small chunk of onion practically identical as he works the blade in a soft rhythm against the cutting board below.

He shakes his head slightly as he turns his eyes back to his own work, voice bright. “So, what did you want to ask?”

Victor feels the knife still in his hand for the briefest moment. He quickly pushes past it. It was ridiculous that a machine could feel nervous, there was no reason for that feeling to even exist in his programming. He starts cutting again, his words measures. “We talked about Yuuko the other day, about how happy she made you.”

“Yeah, Didn’t bore you did I?”

“Oh not at all. It was nice actually. I just-” he presses the knife a little harder, leaving a small mark on the wooden board below. “I wanted to know how you knew you were in love.”

Nishigori stops chopping for a minute. “Gonna say I didn’t expect that question,” he muses, turning more fully towards Victor. “Why do you ask?”

Victor exhales slowly. He knows he doesn’t need to, but it’s a habit at this point. “I just- I really want to know.”

He stares Victor down for a few more seconds before turning back to the side, tone a little softer. “I’m going to say you’ve never been in love then.”

Up until today, he knows the answer would have been a resounding no. He knows some feeling were programmed in him, some that didn’t even really make sense for a machine to have. But love? That’s something that would clearly cause more problems than it was worth. Right now however, he really isn’t sure. It’s yet another strange glitch he can’t explain and it’s _eating_ up his processor thinking about it.

 “I don’t think so, no,” he eventually murmurs, eyes fixed to the countertop as he scrapes the diced onion into a small container and hands it to the other android.

Nishigori chuckles. “I’m surprised by that. Good looking guy like you? People must have been throwing themselves at you.”

Victor rolls his eyes. Another force of habit that he really shouldn’t have. “Less than you’d think.”

Nishigori takes a few seconds to respond, the only sound in the kitchen the soft, wet sound of their knives and the whir of the other machine moving around them. Victor tries to find and delete whatever it is inside of him that’s flooding his his system with nerves as he waits. 

_It was a simple question. Why was his answer something that was filling him with equal parts trepidation and wonder? It isn’t logical._

He quickly flicks his eyes over to the other man, surprised by the fond grin painting his broad features. 

He turns back to Victor when he finally speaks, voice warm. “Well, love is something that humanity has been writing and singing and talking about ever since they first existed. It’s a pretty hard thing for one person to explain.” He leans down on the side, a soft look in his dark eyes that Victor can’t quite place. “And I’m really not the most eloquent speaker.”

Worried at the fact he might not get an answer shoots through Victor like a power surge, the knife dropping to the side as he takes a step towards Nishigori. His voice is a whisper in the space. “Please try.”

Something flickers across his face at Victor’s gentle plea. He sighs again, words as soft as the steam of the onsen as he starts. “Well. I think it’s different for every person. There are so many different types of love. I love my friends, my parents, hell I love that Sakura tea you can get around the parks in central, they’re all different.”

Victor nods slowly at the words. He’s perfectly aware of all that even if it did still confuse him slightly. He’d spent so much of today downloading and cycling through every text he could find about love while Yuuri worked, looking for answers about how he felt. Words like _eros, agape, philia, pragma_ scrolled past his eyes until they started to bleed together in a tangled spider’s web of letters, the definitions playing on repeat in his mind until even in silence he can still hear the vague, tinny voice of the dictionary app chirping at him.

Nothing was helping him decipher the feelings churning so warmly throughout his whole being. 

“I mean I know that’s obvious, but they way I feel about Yuuko, it’s different to all of those.” Nishigori’s voice drops a little as he continues, something sparking faraway in his expression.

“How?”

“Well people talk about love at first sight, but I’ve known her since we were both kids so it wasn’t like that. I just remember one day when we were both in highschool thinking ‘I don’t want us to ever grow apart. I always want you close to me.’” He gently puts down the knife, turning and leaning against the side, words rushing past his lips as easily as if Victor wasn’t even in the room anymore.  “As the years went by, I realised that I’d do anything to make her happy. That one smile from her just made my heart feel like it was so-” He waves his hand as if physically trying to pluck the right word from the ether. He turns to captures Victor’s gaze properly, eyes brimming with something unreadable. “Full.”

Victor scrapes the last of the onion into a fresh container, a new kind of awe spreading through him at such open, reverent words. “Wow.”

“Yeah I know. I’m real poet.” Nishigori chuckles and turns back to his work, softly shaking his head. “Ultimately it’s just something that I know, deep inside me. That being by her side, helping her succeed, it makes me so happy.” His posture softens a little as he speaks. “And I don’t want that feeling to go away.”

There is nothing Victor wouldn’t give to feel how Nishigori is feeling right now, to know if it was the same, if what was sparking between the wires and chips that made his consciousness was in any way comparable to a human experience. 

If what he felt was actually… real. 

He reaches over to turn on the tap next to him and slowly rinse off the dirty knife, a question that had been so loud in his mind it might as well have been burning a physical hole in his memory suddenly dancing on the tip of his tongue. “I understand that. But- how do you know it’s not just admiration? How do you know it’s-” _True love._ “More?”

Nishigori takes a few seconds to respond again, thick eyebrows pinched together in an expression that read as if Victor had just asked him to explain cold fusion to a child. Victor feels the nerves return. Even as a machine, he knows it’s somewhat of a strange question to ask, especially someone of his perceived age. The last thing he wants to do is draw more suspicion to himself than he already has.

Nishigori  turns and crosses his arms when he answers, words still warm and easy. “Well it still is I guess. I admire her for so many different things that she does.” The same smile is still present on his face. “But I think the main difference is if you just admire someone, it doesn’t feel like a piece of you is missing when they’re not with you.” His eyes drop a little, fingers briefly clenching into strained fists at this side. “That you know you’d never quite be the same if they told you they never wanted to see you again.”

Victor nods slowly. He’s at least aware of those kinds of thoughts. Up until Yuuri’s confession this morning, it’s something that worried him so much, the joy of him saying that he didn’t want to find his creator possibly the sweetest happiness he’s ever tasted.

“Well there’s one simple test you can always try.”

His focus is pulled back to the room by Nishigori’s light words. He cocks his head. “What’s that?”

His gentle grin shifts into more of a smirk, an eyebrow raising as he speaks. “How would you feel if this person was romantically involved with someone else?”

Victor freezes for a minute. In all his puzzling, all his thoughts, he’d never actually thought about that. He’d never really needed to, everything Yuuri had told him and that the internet listed suggested that he’d never had any serious romantic partners. Hell, more than one article had made jokes about how much he seemed to prefer the company of machines to actuals humans. 

Victor takes a second to process the idea, a thousand different scenarios flashing through his mind before Nishigori can even put his knife down. Yuuri with a partner. Yuuri married and happy. Yuuri moving on in his life with someone. Someone that wasn’t him.

He feels something sharp lance through his systems at the thought, something fundamental not computing in his mind, the emotions in him overloading in a hot confused mess of numbers and colours until everything crashes to black for the briefest moment. He’s back online within a fraction of a second, though everything just the tiniest bit fuzzier as his consciousness reboots properly. 

Nishigori flinches at his suddenly jerk. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Yes. Yes I’m fine.”

It takes him another brief moment to piece together what exactly just happened, how some deeply forgotten emotion pushed so deep into his programming burst free with the power of a small electrical storm in is mind.

He pales a little at the realisation.

 _Jealousy?_ No. It doesn’t make one iota of sense. Why would any machine, humanoid or not, ever need an emotion that humanity itself saw as poison.

He didn’t even have anyone to be jealous of. It was just a thought, a possibility and yet even the idea of someone else being with Yuuri, touching him, loving him, making him smile that adorably shy grin that lit up the rest of his features like the flicker of gentle fairy lights- he can feel it almost breaking him.

“You know, I think you weren’t telling me the truth earlier.”

Nishigori’s soft words bring him back to the moment. Looking over his expression is slightly teasing as he puts his knife in the sink and washes his hands.

“Why?”

He shrugs as he dries himself, his smile as broad as ever. “I think you do know what love is. Maybe you just haven’t realised it yet.”

Victor feels his eyebrows drop in confusion. He’s still just as conflicted as ever, all of Nishogori’s words causing more question to start brewin under the break in his head.

 _How could Nishigori know?_    

“What do you mean?”

He shakes his head as he lets out the softest laugh. “I’m just saying, there aren’t a lot of people I’d make origami flower crown for.”

“Oh.”

“It’s very good,” he comments kindy as he walks past, lightly patting Victor on the back as he goes, “He’ll love it.”

**_***_ **

**Log Date: Day 99 WY**

Nights always felt just that little bit longer now. When Yuuri first brought him back online, they made the perfect time to clean, organise, recharge, but now the hours just felt… long. He knows it’s illogical. He may have been built for companionship, to be aggressively social, but humans spending their nights sleeping was always a given. Why is it bothering him _now?_

Why now does he find himself pacing the short stretch of hardwood on Yuuri’s floor, replaying the days events again and again until he hears the gentle ocean breeze of his alarm spreading through the too-still air?

He puts down the throw he’d been repeatedly straightening for ten minutes on the couch and slowly rounds the corner to towards Yuuri’s bedroom. He pauses at the door, half open as always. Casually looking inside he can see the bottom half of the bed, a lump of Yuuri’s curled legs clear in the low light. He doesn’t need to look in any further to catch that the blinds by his bed are not completely closed, the coloured sea of lights outside filtering through and illumianting stripes of his duvet in soft waves of neon. He doesn’t stop himself as he walks inside and over to the window to properly adjust the curtains. His hands stops when he catches Yuuri rolled up on his side on the mattress, blanket pulled up under his chin, the curve of his lips slightly parted.

Shutting them properly would make the environment darker, so much better for sleeping, and yet the grip of his hand on the curtains refuses to move. Refuses to shadow the shifting colours gently illuminating the softness of Yuuri’s cheek, the dancing blues and greens and purples a stark contrast to the black of his hair messily spread against his pillow. 

It’s almost mesmerising to watch.

He quickly shuts the thought away, adjusting the blinds and pulling the curtains closed so the room is enveloped in proper darkness.

He looks over the door. He knows he should leave now, let Yuuri sleep and find something to wile away the hours until the sun rises.

He takes a step towards the door. Then another. Then another. Then finds himself at the edge of Yuuri’s bed. He takes one last look at the door before sitting down on the very edge of the mattress, lightly spreading his fingers against the soft blanket.

What he would give to sleep right now. To dream.

He knows it’s stupid. As a machine he has no reason to spend hours being idle, to waste time he could use fulfilling his purpose, the thing he was _built_ to do and yet- he wants to. Desperately. And he wants to know why.

He sometimes wonders what he would even dream about. Memories? He shakes his head as he slowly slips the blanket between his fingers. He only had a few months of memories to sort through, most cleaning or repair related. Hopes? He finds himself lying back a little, shifting around until he’s almost parallel to Yuuri. Yes hopes, those were things he had, things he could feasibly spend hours processing. They were silly and completely pointless considering his primary purpose, but sometimes he did find himself quickly looking up pictures of far off lands and playing them in a short slide show in front of his retina display. Sometimes he’d play them on repeat and let his thoughts wander a little, let himself imagine what it would be like to be in those places. Touching the heated golden sands of an Australian beach, staring up at the coloured river of the northern lights from the chilled icelandic planes, walking through the fresh snow after a Canadian storm. 

He feels himself smiling in the darkness.

They’re such simple thoughts, yet for some reason they made him so content. 

Slowly he turns his head, widening his optical units a little so Yuuri’s dark silhouette becomes a little clearer. One of his hands has moved, palm upturned and flat just a few inches from his face. He isn’t surprised by the sudden jolt in his hand, a small but powerful urge to reach over and lace their fingers together.

It’s not the first time he’s had such thoughts around him.

Squeezing his hand into a fist, he closes his eyes and rolls the same few images behind his eyelids again. They’re all beautiful, idyllic, wonderful places, but looking at them, he can feel that something’s missing, one thing that could make them perfect. 

He slowly opens his eyes and rolls on his side, shuffling a little closer to the other man as quietly as he can.

It’s not just that he wants to see them, he wants to see them _with Yuuri._ Wants to laugh at the sand caught in his shoes, see the flashes of light reflected in his glasses, watch the crystal steam of his breath fill the air in front of them as he shoves his hands in his pocket, desperately trying to keep them warm. 

If he had a heart, he knows it would be beating faster at the idea.

Yuuri had been with him since day one of his new memory, had taken such good care of him, hell he was the reason he was even here right now. The thought of ever moving on to someone else- his nails dig a little harder into his palm at the thought- it’s the closest thing he has to imagining what pain is like.

If Yuuri catches him like this, he knows he can’t lie and say this is the first time he’s laid with him like this. He might not be able to sleep, but he can still imagine it. He can close his eyes and lie motionless next to him for hours until he awkwardly shuffles away half an hour before his alarm starts playing. Half the time, he can’t even keep his eyes closed. He’s found it quite fascinating watching him dream, watching his face subtly shift and move in the darkness as whatever he’s thinking about plays out in his mind.

Yuuri sometimes had the tiniest wrinkle knit between his brows when he slept, the sheets gripped tight between his fingers. Sometimes he wondered if his dreams were bothering him, if they caused him any pain. He wants to ask, but also doesn’t want to admit he’s been watching. 

He might find it difficult to comprehend some of humanity’s nature at times, but even he knew that watching someone sleep could perhaps be seen as… uncomfortable to say the least.

He doesn’t even have a good explanation as to why.

Cycling through the things he does, the feelings brewing in his programming, he did come to a conclusion the other day, but not one that he could really comprehend. Not one that made sense from any point of view.

Maybe he did really know what loneliness felt like.

He pushes the thought away as he did the first time it cropped up. No matter who his creator was, there was no conceivable reason to make a machine that could feel that. Or any of these other feelings that had been cropping up recently. Love, jealousy, annoyance, they had to be some kind of mistake, some glitch that he could straighten out.

One he knows he isn’t going to.

He wants to say that he hadn’t deliberately been avoiding running mandatory diagnostics. The same way he doesn’t want to say he always make sure to plaster his fringe down across the break on his forehead every time he leaves the apartment, or the same way he’d been avoiding immediately Googling things with his internal processor every time he came across anything new.

_He wasn’t supposed to exist anyway. Why act like a proper machine now?_

As he shifts again, he notices Yuuri seem to relax at the movement, subconsciously rolling towards the warm presence. He keeps very still, hoping he wasn’t about to open his eyes, question why his robot was lying in bed with him when he could be doing a thousand other things. Thankfully, he doesn’t wake, a long breath whispering past his lips as he relaxes back into the mattress.

Relief floods through his system. 

Victor continues to slowly trace the shape of his lovely features through the dark, trying not to think too hard about everything that had happened to him recently. 

They may have only been together a few months, but that was Victor’s entire life. Yuuri was literally his everything. His work, his life… his _love._

He feels that familiar warmth in his chest at the thought.

He’d been turning over Nishigori’s words for days now. At first he’d been confused as to what everything meant, nothing he’d said had cleared much up yet those three small words still flashed through his mind whenever he saw Yuuri.

In the end, he’d stopped worrying and come to his own conclusion. He knows it’s not the best, but it’s his and he’s finally happy with it.

He loves him. So much. He doesn’t care what anyone else’s definition of it is or if he isn’t supposed to feel like this. This was his feeling and, to him, he knows it’s true.

He rolls a little closer, taking another long look at Yuuri’s sleeping face before bringing up the calendar of their time together in front of his eyes, watching as the 100th day ticks over as midnight quickly passes. 

100 days. 100 out of how many? 200? 365? 101?

He barely hesitates as he finds the calendar programme in his software and shuts it down indefinitely. He knows finding dates and planning is going to be harder now, but frankly he doesn’t want some kind of ticking clock that he’s enforcing on himself, doesn’t want their time together to be so… calculated. He doesn’t want to _log things_ anymore.

He exits the programme, blinking himself back to the soft darkness of the room.

He doesn’t want their time together to be finite.

The New Years party is tomorrow, and January is when Yuuri says he’ll be completely honest with him.

Maybe that should be his time to be completely honest too.

As slowly as he can he reaches out his hand to touch the soft peach of Yuuri’s cheek. It’s warm against his fingers, the rounded silk of his skin the closest thing Victor had to a feeling of a real home. When he doesn’t stir, he gently stroke the curve of his face, right down to his chin, carefully commiting the feeling to memory as he quietly makes his vow.

_“I love you. And after the party tomorrow, I’ll tell you.”_

He lightly drags his thumb across the full curve of Yuuri’s bottom lip before bringing it to his own, another small spark on contentment spreading warm and shaky through his body.

_“I promise.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doesn’t seem like much of an ending does it?
> 
> Well fear not! Originally mine and jfmesq’s idea was a LOT longer so we had to cut it down for the bang, but now that it’s over you should definitely keep your eyes peeled for the next part of the series coming soon to a screen near you ;) .
> 
> Once again I have to give a MASSIVE thanks to jfmsq for being my rock throughout this whole process and for coming up with such a fun universe to write. Please go and send them ALL the love!!
> 
> So until next time... thanks for reading!!!

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters will be posted every Wednesday!
> 
> Come say hi to me on [Tumblr](https://ravensmores.tumblr.com/) \- @ravensmores


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